o      I 
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UC-NRLF 


20    33b 


PROHIBITION 

THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 


BY 


REV.  J,  A.  HOMAN.  M.  A,,  S.T.B. 


LIBRARY 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


GIFT    OF 


r 


Class 


Cincinnati,  May  I,  1910 
My  Dear  Librarian: 

Kindly  accept  this  volume,  "Prohibition.  The  Enemy 
of  Temperance/'  with  my  compliments. 
Yours  cordially, 


ENDORSEMENTS 


CARDINAL'S  RESIDENCE 

408  N.  Charles  St. 
BALTIMORE,  MD.,  Feb.  28,  1910. 
REV.  J.  A.  HOMAN,  Cincinnati,  O. 

Rev.  Dear  Sir  —  I  beg  to  acknowledge 
the  receipt  of  your  booklet,  "Prohibition, 
the  Enemy  of  Temperance,"  which  you 
have  had  the  kindness  to  send  to  me, 
and  I  assure  you  that  I  am  most  thank- 
ful to  you.  /  offer  you  my  sincere  con- 
gratulations. Very  sincerely  yours, 

J.  CARD.  GIBBONS, 
Archbishop  of  Baltimore. 

ARCHBISHOP'S  RESIDENCE 

2000  Grand  Ave. 

MILWAUKEE,  Wis.,  Feb.  25,  1910. 
REV.  J.  A.  HOMAN,  Cincinnati,  O. 

Rev.  Dear  Sir  —  His  Grace  thanks  you 
most   sincerely  for  your  booklet,   ''Pro- 
hibition, the  Enemy  of  Temperance."    It 
is  certainly  a  step  in  the  right  direction 
and  shows,  which  is  especially  gratify- 
ing,   that    the    sentiment    should    never 
take  the  place  of  the  intellect. 
Sincerely    yours, 
J.  B.  PIERRON,  Secretary. 


BISHOP'S  RESIDENCE 

COVINGTON,  KY.,   March  4,  1910. 
REV.  J.  A.  HOMAN,  Cincinnati,  O. 

Rev.  Dear  Sir  —  The  Bishop  of  Cov- 
ington  thanks  the  Rev.  J.  A.  Homan 
for  the  copy  of  his  book  on  prohibition 
which  he  kindly  sent  to  him.  His  thesis 
has,  in  settled  communities,  obtained  the 
assent  of  centuries. 

Its  practice  helps  to  form  manly  char- 
acters who  need  not  the  tutelage  of 
extremists  until  old  age.  Voluntary 
total  abstinence  is  a  heroic  deed  which 
we  admire,  but  temperance  is  a  virtue 
which  all  must  and  can  practice  and 
which  Christian  education  alone  enables 
a  man  to  live  up  to. 

High  license,  rightly  enforced  by 
punishment  for  infractions  of  the  law, 
seems  the  right  solution  of  the  liquor 
problem  in  this  country. 

"C.  P.  MAES. 

"I  have  just  read  your  pamphlet, 
which  I  find  very  fair  for  both  sides  of 
the  question  —  it  is  well  conceived  and 
written." — Very  Rev.  Ferdinand  Bros- 
sart,  Vicar-General  Diocese  of  Coving- 
ton,  Ky.  

"I  have  just  had  an  opportunity  to 
look  over  the  contents  of  your  book, 
and  have  no  doubt  that  with  your  Jiter- 
ary  skill  and  your  knowledge  of  ethics, 
you  have  written  a  book  which  will  set 
many  people  to  thinking  seriously." — 
Rev.  Francis  J .  Finn,  S.  J. 


"You  have  treated  the  subject  with 
so  much  logic  and  in  so  delicate  a  man- 
ner that,  while  many  will  be  enlightened 
on  this  momentous  'liquor  question,'  no 
one  will  be  offended.  It  sounds  the 
keynote  for  honest  temperance." — Rev. 
Martin  Neville,  Pastor  Holy  Angel's 
Church,  Dayton,  Ohio. 


"Your  pamphlet  upon  prohibition  is 
well  written,  in  moderate  tone,  and,  all 
in  all,  is  convincing;  inasmuch  as  you 
have  not  taken  any  especial  brief  for  the 
saloon,  and  express  freely  the  sentiment 
of  all  intelligent  citizens  with  regard  to 
the  law-breaking  saloon. 

"Your  appeal  to  the  Bible  seems  to 
me  effective,  since  it  is  quite  certain  that 
the  Old  World  has  always  looked  upon 
mild  alcoholic  drink  as  a  legitimate  food 
and  refreshment,  and  in  Old  Testament 
and  New,  this  view  is  taken  as  a  matter 
of  course." — Rev.  Geo.  A.  Thayer,  Uni- 
tarian Church,  President  Wm.  H.  Taffs 
Cincinnati  Pastor. 

"I  am  writing  concerning  your  book 
from  memory : 

"Your  motto — 'Prohibition  is  the 
enemy  of  temperance' — hits  the  nail  on 
the  head.  What  we  need  is  not  the  law 
on  every  human  activity  and  the  police- 
man's club  behind  every  citizen,  but  an 
enlightened  and  educated  community. 
The  law  must  be  written  in  our  hearts 
and  then  none  need  teach  his  neighbor 
to  do  what  is  right,  for  they  will  all 
know  it. 

"To  say  that  the  Bible  stands  for 
prohibition  is  sophistry. .  Wine  makes 
glad  man's  heart  and  is  by  divine  com- 
mand used  in  the  sacrificial  cult,  while 
that  which  is  corrupt  is  excluded  from 
it.  The  constant  denunciation  of  legiti- 
mate pleasure  is  inciting  to  excess  and 
directly  responsible  for  vice.  Temper- 
ance must  be  the  fruit  of  the  spirit,  as 
the  Apostle  said,  and  surely  against  in- 
temperance there  is  no  law." — Rev.  Dr. 
G.  Deutsch,  Hebrew  Union  College. 


"In  my  judgment  your  pamphlet  hits 
the  bull's-eye  of  the  target.  It  is  strong,, 
fair  and  convincing;  in  fact,  it  sets 
forth  clearly  the  New  Testament  idea 
of  temperance,  which  is  self-control 
Better  for  some  men  not  to  drink  intoxi- 
cants at  all,  as  you  say,  but  all  may,  if 
they  choose,  drink  in  moderation;  but 
no  man  is  justified  in  making  a  brute  of 
himself.  This  is  to  me  sound  doctrine, 
and  above  all  the  true  position  on  the 
so-called  temperance  question."  —  Rev. 
Geo.  M.  Clickner,  Secretary  Bishop 
Boyd  Vincent.  Diocese  of  Southern  Ohio- 
(P'rotestant  Episcopal  Church). 


PROHIBITION 

THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 


AN    EXPOSITION    OF  THE    LIQUOR    PROBLEM    IN    THE 

LIGHT  OF  SCRIPTURE,  PHYSIOLOGY,  LEGISLATION 

AND  POLITICAL  ECONOMY.    DEFENDING  THE 

STRICTLY  MODERATE  DRINKER  AND 

ADVOCATING  THE  LICENSE   SYSTEM 

AS    A    RESTRICTIVE    MEASURE 


BY 


REV.  J.  A.  HOMAN,  M.  A.,  S.T.  B. 


PUBLISHED   BY 

THE  CHRISTIAN   LIBERTY  BUREAU 

P.  O.  Box  36,  Station  D,  CINCINNATI,  OHIO 


Mailed  to  any  address  on  receipt  of  fifty  cents  in  silver. 
In  quantities  and  to  agents  at  special  rates. 


ENDORSEMENTS 


CARDINAL'S  RESIDENCE 
408  N.  Charles  St. 

BALTIMORE,  MD.,  Feb.  28,  1910. 
REV.  J.  A.  HOMAN,  Cincinnati,  O. 

Rev.  Dear  Sir  —  I  beg  to  acknowledge 
the  receipt  of  your  booklet,  "Prohibition, 
the  Enemy  of  Temperance,"  which  you 
have  had  the  kindness  to  send  to  me, 
and  I  assure  you  that  I  am  most  thank- 
ful to  you.  /  offer  you  my  sincere  con- 
gratulations. Very  sincerely  yours, 

J.  CARD.  GIBBONS, 
Archbishop  of  Baltimore. 

ARCHBISHOP'S  RESIDENCE 

2000  Grand  Ave. 

MILWAUKEE,  Wis.,  Feb.  25,  1910. 
REV.  J.  A.  HOMAN,  Cincinnati,  O. 

Rev.  Dear  Sir —  His  Grace  thanks  you 
most   sincerely  for  your  booklet,   "Pro- 
hibition, the  Enemy  of  Temperance."    It 
is  certainly  a  step  in  the  right  direction 
and  shows,  which  is  especially  gratify- 
ing,   that    the    sentiment    should    never 
take  the  place  of  the  intellect. 
Sincerely    yours, 
J.  B.  PIERRON,  Secretary. 


BISHOP'S  RESIDENCE 

COVINGTON,   KY.,  March  4,  1910. 
REV.  J.  A.  HOMAN,  Cincinnati,  O. 

Rev.  Dear  Sir  —  The  Bishop  of  Cov- 
ington  thanks  the  Rev.  J.  A.  Homan 
for  the  copy  of  his  book  on  prohibition 
which  he  kindly  sent  to  him.  His  thesis 
has,  in  settled  communities,  obtained  the 
assent  of  centuries. 

Its  practice  helps  to  form  manly  char- 
acters who  need  not  the  tutelage  of 
extremists  until  old  age.  Voluntary 
total  abstinence  is  a  heroic  deed  which 
we  admire,  but  temperance  is  a  virtue 
which  all  must  and  can  practice  and 
which  Christian  education  alone  enables 
a  man  to  live  up  to. 

High  license,  rightly  enforced  by 
punishment  for  infractions  of  the  law, 
seems  the  right  solution  of  the  liquor 
problem  in  this  country. 

C.  P.  MAES. 

"I  have  just  read  your  pamphlet, 
which  I  find  very  fair  for  both  sides  of 
the  question  —  it  is  well  conceived  and 
written." — Very  Rev.  Ferdinand  Bros- 
sart,  Vicar-General  Diocese  of  Coving- 
ton,  Ky.  

"I  have  just  had  an  opportunity  to 
look  over  the  contents  of  your  book, 
and  have  no  doubt  that  with  your  liter- 
ary skill  and  your  knowledge  of  ethics, 
you  have  written  a  book  which  will  set 
many  people  to  thinking  seriously." — 
Rev.  Francis  f.  Finn,  S.  J. 


"You  have  treated  the  subject  with 
so  much  logic  and  in  so  delicate  a  man- 
ner that,  while  many  will  be  enlightened 
on  this  momentous  'liquor  question/  no 
one  will  be  offended.  It  sounds  the 
keynote  for  honest  temperance." — Rev. 
Martin  Neville,  Pastor  Holy  Angela 
Church,  Dayton,  Ohio. 


"Your  pamphlet  upon  prohibition  is 
well  written,  in  moderate  tone,  and,  all 
in  all,  is  convincing;  inasmuch  as  you 
have  not  taken  any  especial  brief  for  the 
saloon,  and  express  freely  the  sentiment 
of  all  intelligent  citizens  with  regard  to 
the  law-breaking  saloon. 

"Your  appeal  to  the  Bible  seems  to 
me  effective,  since  it  is  quite  certain  that 
the  Old  World  has  always  looked  upon 
mild  alcoholic  drink  as  a  legitimate  food 
and  refreshment,  and  in  Old  Testament 
and  New,  this  view  is  taken  as  a  matter 
of  course." — Rev.  Geo.  A.  Thayer,  Uni- 
tarian Church,  President  Wm.  H.  Taffs 
Cincinnati  Pastor. 

"I  am  writing  concerning  your  book 
from  memory : 

"Your  motto — 'Prohibition  is  the 
enemy  of  temperance' — hits  the  nail  on 
the  head.  What  we  need  is  not  the  law 
on  every  human  activity  and  the  police- 
man's club  behind  every  citizen,  but  an 
enlightened  and  educated  community. 
The  law  must  be  written  in  our  hearts 
and  then  none  need  teach  his  neighbor 
to  do  what  is  right,  for  they  will  all 
know  it. 

"To  say  that  the  Bible  stands  for 
prohibition  is  sophistry. .  Wine  makes 
glad  man's  heart  and  is  by  divine  com- 
mand used  in  the  sacrificial  cult,  while 
that  which  is  corrupt  is  excluded  from 
it.  The  constant  denunciation  of  legiti- 
mate pleasure  is  inciting  to  excess  and 
directly  responsible  for  vice.  Temper- 
ance must  be  the  fruit  of  the  spirit,  as 
the  Apostle  said,  and  surely  against  in- 
temperance there  is  no  law." — Rev.  Dr. 
G.  Deutsch,  Hebrew  Union  College. 


"In  my  judgment  your  pamphlet  hits 
the  bull's-eye  of  the  target.  It  is  strong, 
fair  and  convincing ;  in  fact,  it  sets 
forth  clearly  the  New  Testament  idea 
of  temperance,  which  is  self-control. 
Better  for  some  men  not  to  drink  intoxi- 
cants at  all,  as  you  say,  but  all  may,  if 
they  choose,  drink  in  moderation;  but 
no  man  is  justified  in  making  a  brute  of 
himself.  This  is  to  me  sound  doctrine, 
and  above  all  the  true  position  on  the 
so-called  temperance  question."  —  Rev. 
Geo.  M.  CUckner,  Secretary  Bishop 
Boyd  Vincent,  Diocese  of  Southern  Ohio- 
(Protestant  Episcopal  Church}. 


PREFACE 

THIS  essay  on  the  liquor  problem  is  offered  to  the  American 
public  without  apology.  It  defends  a  cause  which  is  grossly 
misrepresented  at  the  present  day  —  that  of  temperance  in  con- 
tradistinction to  abstinence.  Advocates  of  prohibition  have 
attempted  to  put  under  tribute  and  call  to  their  aid  medical 
science,  physiology,  psychology  and  political  economy  —  not  for 
the  sake  of  the  whole  truth,  but  of  such  part  and  coloring  of  it 
as  best  suits  their  prejudices.  They  would  abandon  the  gospel 
standard  of  abstaining  or  drinking  moderately,  according  to 
choice,  and  lift  up  the  substitute  banner  of  a  legal  compulsion. 
They  would  discard  the  recognized  scriptural  conception  of  tem- 
perance as  antiquated  and  ill  suited  to  the  needs  and  assumed 
progress  of  the  twentieth  century.  They  go  so  far  as  to  regard 
moderate  use  a  malum  per  se,  and  advise  the  elimination  of 
alcohol  from  materia  medica. 

As  against  these  extremists  it  has  been  the  aim  of  the  writer 
to  discuss  the  problem  from  its  chief  points  of  view  with  every 
effort  of  impartiality,  and  vindicate  the  standing  of  the  strictly 
moderate  drinker  ethically  and  physiologically  without  disturbing 
the  higher  claims  of  the  voluntary  abstainer.  At  the  same  time 
he  has  endeavored  to  show  that  the  license  system  is  sufficiently 
efficacious  in  the  restriction  and  regulation  of  the  liquor  traffic. 

Nothing  new  is  claimed  for  his  undertaking,  save  perhaps 
that  it  is>  a  handbook  covering  pretty  much  the  entire  subject 
matter  of  the  liquor  controversy. 

He  wishes  to  express  his  acknowledgments  for  a  liberal  use 
of  facts  and  statistics  from  the  volumes  of  the  Committee  of 
Fifty  and  the  Year  Book  of  the  United  States  Brewers  Associa- 
tion. If  anything  in  the  essay  shall  act  as  a  tonic  to  restore 
healthy  views  on  a  much-abused  subject,  his  efforts  will  have 
been  sufficiently  rewarded. 


197238 


I. 

THE  LIQUOR  PROBLEM 

Felix   qui  potuit  rerum   cognoscere   causas. — The   Aeneid. 

THE  liquor  problem  is  so  generally  and  intensely  a  living 
one  in  the  United  States  that  it  seems  to  eclipse  in  interest 
and  importance  the  tariff  and  anything  of  National  legislation. 
It  is  a  subject  that  has  engaged  the  attention  of  the  American 
people  long  and  persistently  until  nearly  everybody  is  more  or 
less  familiar  with  its  past,  and  in  touch  with  its  present  bearings. 
An  unsatisfied  public  sense  of  righteousness,  largely  prompted 
by  the  ambitions  of  unscrupulous  politicians,  has  kept  it  promi- 
nently in  public  sight.  Many  a  vulgar  and  properly  obscure  name 
emerges  into  public  view  and  political  notoriety  for  no  other 
reason  than  that  it  stands  either  for  or  against  prohibition.  All 
the  bearer  needs  to  this  end  is  to  defend  his  cause  in  a  loud  and 
declamatory  fashion.  Indeed  it  would  be  well-nigh  impossible 
for  the  controversy  to  reach  a  decisive  settlement  in  the  political 
forum,  for  it  is  too  valuable  an  asset  to  the  professional  office- 
seeker  to  be  willingly  discontinued.  Besides,  for  the  past  fifty 
years,  prohibition,  license  and  tax  have  each  been  tried  by  one 
or  other  of  the  several  States,  and  not  one  of  these  methods 
dealing  with  the  suppression  or  regulation  of  the  liquor  traffic 
was  found  sufficiently  effective  to  invite  general  adoption.  Even 
the  State  dispensary  system,  from  which  so  much  had  been 
expected  in  South  Carolina,  was  found  inadequate  to  counteract 
the  evil  results  of  alcoholic  abuse.  It  is,  therefore,  evident  that 
the  experimental  stage  of  the  problem  is  still  with  us  and  may 
continue  indefinitely  on  account  of  conflicting  theories  and  psycho- 
logical differences  in  our  heterogeneous  population.  Probably 
several  changes  from  the  present  kinds  of  legislation  will  be 
evolved  in  course  of  time  for  the  sake  of  further  experiment. 

At  the  present  moment,  however,  the  heart  of  the  Nation  is 
beating  and  struggling  against  a  colossal  prohibition  wave,  the 
crest  of  which  has  apparently  not  yet  been  reached.  To  realize 


6  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

its  proportions  by  merely  taking  into  account  the  States  which 
have  adopted  prohibition,  either  by  law  or  in  their  respective 
constitutions,  would  be  quite  misleading.  Its  conquests  have 
been  of  far  greater  sweep  and  significance.  The  virus  of  pro- 
hibition has  been  infused  into  the  veins  and  arteries  of  the  whole 
country — North  and  South,  East  and  West — principally  through 
the  successful  campaigns  of  local  option,  managed  by  the  anti- 
saloon  leagues.  Many  States,  .nominally  under  tax  or  license, 
are  practically  committed  to  prohibitory  laws  throughout  the 
greater  part  of  their  territory.  Prohibition  by  special  law  or 
constitutionally  prevails  in  the  following  States:  Alabama, 
Georgia,  Kansas,  Maine,  Mississippi,  North  Carolina,  North 
Dakota,  Oklahoma,  Tennessee ;  but  the  manufacture  and  sale  of 
intoxicants  is  prohibited  in  a  very  considerable  and  apparently 
ever-increasing  number  of  counties  in  Kentucky,  Ohio,  Indiana, 
Illinois,  Florida,  Iowa,  Massachusetts,  Minnesota,  Missouri,  Mon- 
tana, Oregon,  South  Dakota,  Texas,  Virginia,  West  Virginia,  etc. 
It  is  estimated  that  of  the  20,000,000  people  in  the  fourteen 
Southern  States  17,000,000  are  under  prohibitory  laws  in  some 
form;  and  that  36,000,000  live  under  prohibition  in  the  United 
States.  These  figures  from  prohibition  sources  may  be  exagger- 
ated, but  even  so,  they  show  how  absorbingly  and  universally  the 
abstinence  issue  has  grown  upon  the  American  people. 

Revolutionary  as  this  result  may  appear  in  the  adjustment 
or  solution  of  the  problem,  it  must  be  subjected  to  close  analysis 
before  warranting  any  conclusions  as  to  the  real  strength  of  pro- 
hibition. To  admit  that  36,000,000  people  live  under  prohibition 
in  some  form  does  not  mean  that  a  majority  of  these  believe  in 
it  either  as  a  moral  principle  or  a  finality  in  the  governmental 
disposition  of  the  problem.  To  most  of  them  it  is  for  the  time 
being  a  compromise  measure ;  they  prefer  it  to  the  proximate 
nuisance  of  a  vile  saloon  with  its  crime-breecling  accessories.  In 
this  connection  it  is  a  fact  that  the  phenomenal  progress  of  pro- 
hibition could  never  have  been  accomplished  without  the  assist- 
ance of  the  moderate  drinker,  who  voted  for  law  and  order 
without  troubling  himself  about  the  liquor  problem  as  long  as 
he  could  supply  himself  with  alcoholic  beverages  at  home  through 
the  agency  of  the  Interstate  Commerce  Law.  It  is  safe  to  say 


THE  LIQUOR  PROBLEM  7 

that  the  moderate  drinkers  constitute  more  than  one-half  of  the 
prohibition  vote.  There  is  also  a  smaller  proportion  of  this  vote 
made  up  of  abstainers,  who  do  not  believe  in  legal  compulsion 
as  a  matter  of  principle,  but  who  are  nevertheless  in  sympathy 
with  prohibition  because  they  think  it  is  the  best  available  method 
at  the  present  time  of  reducing  the  evils  of  intemperance.  In 
this  class  belong  more  or  less  the  200,000  and  more  members  of 
the  Catholic  Total  Abstinence  Societies.  The  real  prohibitionist, 
largely  recruited  from  the  evangelical  churches,  so-called,  with 
whom  the  two  classes  described  are  temporarily  affiliated'  differs 
from  both  of  them  fundamentally.  He  is  inexorable  in  holding 
to  the  principle  that  the  drinking  of  all  alcoholic  liquors,  even  in 
the  most  moderate  quantity,  is  a  malum  per  se,  and  that  their 
manufacture  and  sale  must  be  suppressed  everywhere,  not  except- 
ing, if  possible,  their  manufacture,  sale  and  use  for  medicinal 
purposes.  The  association  of  these  three  diverse  classes  (strange 
bedfellows  they  seem)  constitutes  the  complex  strength  of  pro- 
hibition sentiment  —  and  the  alliance  is  likely  to  continue  until 
the  liquor  traffic  has  been  seriously  reformed,  and  put  on  a 
higher  plane  of  social  respectability. 

In  undertaking  —  in  this  little  volume  —  an  analysis  of  the 
liquor  problem,  I  shall  endeavor  to  be  accurate,  impartial  and 
comprehensive.  Dogmatic  utterances  will  be  carefully  avoided, 
for  they  have  no  value  against  experience  and  facts.  The 
arrangement  of  the  subject  matter  will  be  as  follows:  1st  — 
Temperance  from  the  point  of  the  Scriptures,  traditions  of  the 
early  Christian  church,  the  fathers  of  the  church,  the  testimony 
of  the  Catholic  church,  and  the  attitude  of  present-day  Christian 
denominations.  2d  —  The  physiological  position  of  the  strictly 
moderate  drinker.  3d  —  The  physiological,  economical  and  leg- 
islative aspects  of  the  problem  with  regard  to  alcoholic  abuse, 
involving  a  discussion  of  the  inefficacy  of  prohibition.  4th  — 
The  superiority  of  license  as  a  remedial  agent. 

I  am  aware  that  writers  favoring  prohibition  are  impugning 
the  value  of  scriptural  argument  on  the  ground  that  it  is  obsolete 
—  a  sort  of  ancient  history  —  and  no  longer  suits  the  conditions 
of  our  times;  but,  irrespective  of  the  absurdities  which  such  an 
assumption  must  lead  to  —  for  instance  in  regard  to  the  present 


8  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

binding  force  of  the  decalogue  —  it  is  evident  that  so  gratuitous 
a  repudiation  would  never  have  been  made  if  the  texts  on  tem- 
perance had  suited  their  newfangled  theories  regarding  abstinence. 

In  the  essay  nothing  will  be  said  to  the  least  disparagement 
of  the  voluntary  abstainer.  He  is  facile  princeps  in  the  realm  of 
self-abnegation  and  altruism;  but  he  did  not  reach  his  lofty 
position  by  compulsory  methods.  His  Christian  liberty  is  quite 
as  unchallenged  as  that  of  the  moderate  drinker.  Would  that 
the  human  race  were  one  total  abstinence  society  of  voluntary 
profession,  not  by  the  tyranny  of  law ! 

I  shall  begin  the  discussion  of  my  subject  by  presenting  the 
scriptural  views  on  temperance  and  abstinence. 


II. 
TEMPERANCE  IN  THE  OLD  LAW 

THE  strictly  moderate  use  of  alcoholic  drink,  so  far  from 
being   condemned,   is   commended   in   the   Old   Testament. 
Moderate  drinking  was  in  vogue  among  the  Jews  and  constituted 
their  fundamental  idea  of  temperance. 

The  Psalmist  (Ps.  103:15)  says:  "And  that  wine  may  cheer 
the  heart  of  man."1  It  is  "Yayin,"  fermented  grape  juice.  And 
we  read  concerning  the  vine  in  the  parable  of  trees  (Judges  9)  : 
"And  it  answered  them :  Can  I  forsake  my  wine,  that  cheereth 
God  and  men?"2  In  Deuteronomy,  chapter  14,  it  is  related 
that  the  Jews  who  lived  at  too  great  a  distance  to  attend  the 
festival  at  the  tabernacle  were  allowed  to  partake  of  wine  and 
strong  drink  in  the  house  appointed  by  God  for  its  celebration. 
Since  the  Almighty  Himself  gave  this  direction,  there  could  not 
have  been  question  of  anything  save  a  moderate  use  of  wine  or 
strong  drink,  and  He  gives  the  clearest  possible  endorsement  of 
temperance,  as  distinguished  from  total  abstinence. 

The  very  fact  that  priests  of  the  old  law  were  forbidden 
wine  and  strong  drink  during  their  official  ministrations  in  the 
tabernacle,  proves  to  a  certainty  their  lawful  use  of  it  outside 
of  the  sanctuary;  for  otherwise  such  prohibition  would  have 
been  unnecessary.  If  in  Proverbs  kings  and  princes  are  coun- 
seled to  abstain  from  wine  and  strong  drink,  it  is  for  the  particu- 
lar occasion  of  administering  justice,  "lest  they  drink  and  for- 
get judgments,  and  pervert  the  cause  of  the  children  of  the 
poor."3  This  counsel,  too,  proves  that  at  other  times  kings  and 
princes  were  accustomed  to  drink  wine  moderately.  In  the  very 


Protestant  versions : 

1 — "And  wine  that  maketh  glad  the  heart  of  man." — Psalm  104:15. 

2  — "And  the  vine  said  unto  them,  Should  I  leave  my  wine,  which  cheereth 

God  and  man?" — Judges  9:13. 
3— "Lest  they  drink,  and  forget  the  law,  and  pervert  the  judgment  of  any 

of  the  afflicted."—  Prov.  31 :5. 


10  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

next  verse  we  read:  "Give  strong  drink  to  them  that  are  sad: 
and  wine  to  them  that  are  grieved  in  mind."1 

The  Nazarites  took  the  vow  of  separation  voluntarily,  and 
their  obligation  to  abstain  from  "wine  and  from  everything  that 
may  make  a  man  drunk"2  usually  continued  for  thirty,  sometimes 
for  sixty  and  even  a  hundred  days,  and  in  one  case  for  seven 
years  which  had  to  be  thrice  repeated.  Scripture  mentions  three 
Nazarites  for  life  —  Samson,  Samuel  and  John  the  Baptist,  the 
designation  being  applied  only  to  the  first  of  the  three.  But  the 
Nazarites  were  few  in  number,  separated  as  they  were  to  the 
Lord's  service  in  the  sanctuary,  and  at  the  expiration  of  their 
vow,  after  making  offerings  and  sacrifices  at  the  door  of  the 
tabernacle  they  were  released  from  its  obligation,  as  God's  word 
directed.  "After  this  the  Nazarite  may  drink  wine."3  The 
Hebrew  word  which  is  translated  wine,  is  "Yayin,"  and  there  can 
be  no  mistake  that  this  was  "fermented  grape  juice."  It  is  the 
same  "Yayin"  that  describes  the  drunkard  in  Proverbs.  Again 
is  this  segregation  of  a  few  to  total  abstinence  incontrovertible 
proof  that  the  Jews,  so  far  from  being  under  any  general  pro- 
hibitory statute,  were  wont  to  drink  moderately  of  wine  and 
other  fermented  juices ;  otherwise  there  would  have  been  no 
need  of  a  special  law  for  the  Nazarites  to  abstain  from  intoxicat- 
ing drink;  nor  any  reason  for  the  provision  of  allowing  the 
Nazarite  to  resume  the  use  of  wine. 

In  this  connection  it  is  noteworthy  that  if  general  abstinence 
laws  had  been  desirable  they  certainly  would  have  been  made 
for  the  Jews,  for  their  government  was  a  theocracy.  God  Him- 
self, through  the  mouthpiece  of  His  patriarchs  and  prophets  and 
lawgivers,  gave  them  a  code  and  prescribed  penalties,  but  not 
once  did  He  prohibit  a  moderate  use  of  wine  or  strong  drink, 
but  only  its  abuse.  He  went  no  farther  than  enjoining  temper- 
ance and  forbidding  intemperance. 

The   Jews   observed  voluntary  as  well  as  prescribed   fasts, 

Protestant  versions: 

1  —"Give  strong  drink  unto  him  that  is  ready  to  perish,  and  wine  unto 

those  that  be  of  heavy  hearts." —  Prov.  31 :6. 
3  — "From  wine  and  strong  drink." —  Num.  6  :3. 
3 — "And  after  that  the  Nazarite  may  drink  wine." — Num.  6:20. 


TEMPERANCE  IN  THE  OLD  LAW  11 

during  which  they  abstained  from  wine ;  but  from  this  it  is  very 
clear  that  at  other  times  they  were  familiar  with  its  use.  And 
that  which  they  abstained  from  must  needs  have  been  genuine 
wine,  "fermented  grape  juice;"  otherwise  there  would  not  have 
been  any  reason  to  do  without  it  on  fast  days.  So  the  Rechabites 
were  recommended  for  fidelity  to  their  vow,  without  reference 
to  any  merit  attaching  to  their  abstinence,  although  no  doubt  it 
had  a  great  deal,  because  it  was  entirely  voluntary.  But,  what- 
ever it  had,  their  singular  habits  were  a  most  convincing  proof 
that  the  Jewish  people  at  large,  were  not  total  abstainers. 

It  is  a  matter  of  history  that  the  Hebrews  in  the  old  law 
were  acquainted  not  only  with  wine,  but  barley  beer  and  honey 
wine  used  as  beverages.  No  other  restriction  was  imposed  upon 
them  than  their  moderate  use.  They  constituted  part  of  their 
diet ;  and  wine  by  God's  express  command  was  used  in  the  cele- 
bration of  their  religious  festivals  and  at  their  sacrificial  feasts 
and  offerings  in  the  temple. 

At  the  Feast  of  the  Passover,  soon  after  the  Israelites  had 
settled  in  the  land  of  Canaan,  a  certain  number  of  cups  of  red 
wine  was  passed  around  in  succession  to  the  worshippers  at 
specified  intervals  of  the  ceremonies.  This  wine  was  •  always 
mixed  with  water,  which  shows  conclusively  that  it  was'  fer- 
mented grape  juice.  At  Pentecost,  or  the  "Feast  of  Weeks," 
each  Jew  was  required  to  make  a  drink-offering  of  wine,  com- 
prising the  fourth  part  of  a  hin.  A  hin  contained  about  seven 
pints,  English  measure,  and  again  the  wine  was  "Yayin," 
fermented  grape  juice.  Strange  that  God  should  have  com- 
manded such  an  offering  to  be  brought  before  Him  in  thanks- 
giving if  it  were  an  unqualified  poison  and  unmitigated  evil! 
On  the  Feast  of  Trumpets  (the  Hebrew  New  Year)  the  same 
libation  was  offered  at  divine  service.  And  the  drink  offering 
was  the  same  for  the  Day  of  Atonement.  At  the  Feast  of  Taber- 
nacles (Feast  of  the  Ingathering)  the  first  fruits  of  the 'harvest 
—  of  corn,  wine  and  oil  —  were  presented  to  the  Lord.  It  was 
the  wine  of  the  new  vintage.  The  meat  offerings,  which  accord- 
ing to  law  were  made  "day  by  day  continually"  in  the  temple  at 
the  morning  and  evening  sacrifice,  consisted  of  pure  flour,  oil 
and  wine/ 


12  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

In  accordance  with  ancient  usage,  both  the  Orthodox  and 
Reformed  Jews  of  the  present  day  use  genuine  wine  at  their  Pass- 
over and  other  feasts.  In  Northern  European  countries,  on 
account  of  poverty,  strong  liquors,  such  as  brandy  or  the  juice 
of  raisins,  are  sometimes  substituted. 

We  read  that  Solomon  gave  to  Hiram's  servants,  the  hewers 
who  cut  lumber  for  the  building  of  the  temple,  "twenty  thousand 
measures  of  wine."1  This  Hebrew  liquid  measure  was  called 
a  bath,  containing  nearly  six  gallons,  and,  therefore,  the 
amount  which  the  king  of  Tyre  received  for  his  men  was 
120,000  gallons.  It  was  "Yayin" —  fermented  grape  juice.  The 
ancient  Hebrews  were  not  acquainted  with  unfermented  grape 
juice  in  hermetically  sealed  bottles.  That  is  purely  a  modern 
commodity.  Could  any  historical  fact  prove  more  conclusively 
that  wine  was  a  common  beverage  among  the  Jews  and  kindred 
nations?  When  Israel's  army  made  a  feast  at  Hebron  over  the 
anointing  of  David  as  king  of  the  united  people,  we  read  that 
''they  were  there  with  David  three  days,  eating  and  drinking,"2 
and  there  was  "wine,  oil  and  oxen  and  sheep  in  abundance."3 
That  must  have  been  a  barbecue  on  a  large  scale,  and  a  liberal 
supply  of  wine  was  provided.  The  army  canteen  had  not  yet 
been  'tabooed.  We  find  the  pages  of  the  Old  Testament  strewn 
with  evidence  that  wine  was  in  common  use  among  the  Hebraic 
people,  and  that  only  its  abuse  was  condemned. 


Protestant  versions: 

1 — "Twenty  thousand  baths  of  wine." — II  Chronicles  2:10. 
2 — "And  there  they  were  with   David  three  days,  eating  and   drinking." 
3 — "They   brought    wine    and    oil,    and    oxen,    and    sheep   abundantly." — 
I   Chronicles    12:39-40. 


III. 
THE  TWO-WINE  THEORY 

THE  two-wine  theory,  which  would  distinguish  between 
intoxicating  and  non-intoxicating  wines  of  the  Bible,  will 
not  stand  the  test  of  honest  criticism.  Whenever  its  translators 
use  the  word  "wine"  they  can  not  mean  anything  but  "fermented 
grape  juice."  There  is  not  a  lexicographer  who  gives  it  any 
other  meaning.  Even  the  unfermented  grape  juice  of  the  present 
day  is  not  labeled  wine,  and  if  it  should  be,  it  would  be  a  mis- 
nomer. Webster  defines  wine  to  be  "the  fermented  juice  of 
grapes,"  and  the  same  definition  may  be  found  in  all  standard 
dictionaries.  It  is  more  than  a  paradox,  it  is  a  real  contradiction 
in  terms,  to  speak  of  unfermented  wine,  for  that  would  be  spelled 
out:  "unfermented,  fermented  grape  juice."  It  will  not  mend 
matters  to  say  that  the  Hebrew  "Yayin,"  the  Greek  "Oinos," 
and  the  English  "wine,"  are  generic  terms,  including  all  kinds  of 
wine.  So  they  are.  But  they  only  include  genuine  wine,  not 
such  unfermented  liquids  as  are  not  yet  wine,  or  prevented  by 
some  chemical  process  of  preservation  from  ever  becoming  so. 

From  Genesis  to  Revelation  there  is  not  a  single  bit  of  evi- 
dence to  show  that  among  the  Bible  wines  some  were  intoxicat- 
ing and  others  non-intoxicating.  Whatever  has  been  evolved  to 
the  contrary  is  the  cobweb  of  a  prejudiced  brain,  easily  brushed 
aside  by  comparisons  and  facts.  It  is  a  theory  not  much  more 
than  a  half  century  old,  but  untenable  as  it  is,  it  serves  the  pur- 
pose of  a  subterfuge  for  those  who,  in  order  to  find  scriptural 
sanction  for  an  impracticable  and  unethical  public  measure,  do 
not  hesitate  to  twist  God's  word  out  of  its  plain  and  universally 
accepted  meaning.  They  would  deny  Christ  Himself  if  they 
could  convince  themselves  that  He  approved  (which,  as  we  shall 
see,  he  undoubtedly  did)  of  a  moderate  use  of  wine.  Even  the 
poetic  phrase,  "fruit  of  the  vine,"  which  the  Savior  used  at  the 
Last  Supper,  was  but  a  repetition  of  the  Jewish  formula  pro- 
nounced at  the  Passover  feasts,  and  "blood  of  the  grape,"  a 
figurative  expression  for  wine. 


14  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

So  "Tirosch,"  the  Hebrew  for  must,  is  translated  "wine," 
because  it  is  a  natural  process  for  grape  juice  first  to  be  must, 
and  then  by  fermentation  to  become  wine.  Dr.  Howard  Crosby, 
of  the  Presbyterian  Church,  who  pronounced  the  two-wine  theory 
as  being  without  foundation,  writes :  "Must  stands  to  wine  just 
as  dough  stands  to  bread;  and  must  may  be  called  wine  just  as 
dough  may  be  called  bread."  It  is  a  metaphoric  expression  for 
wine,  just  as  dough  is  for  bread.  If  the  sacred  writers  had 
intended  must  to  mean  "un fermented  grape  juice,  artificially  pre- 
served," they  would  have  used  some  expletives  to  distinguish  it 
from  the  -must  which  naturally  turns  into  wine,  and  made  their 
meaning  clear.  Their  failure  to  do  so  is  corroborative  proof  that 
"Tirosch"  and  "Yayin"  are  interchangeable  terms,  both  meaning 
wine.  Thus  wort  in  the  brewery  vats  may  be  properly  designated 
beer  before  the  process  of  fermentation  has  set  in. 


IV. 
TEMPERANCE  IN  THE  NEW  LAW 

THAT  Christ  inculcated  the  necessity  of  temperance,  and 
not  of  abstinence,  is  very  clear  from  the  first  miracle  he 
wrought,  when  He  changed  water  into  wine  at  the  marriage 
feast  of  Cana.  His  motive  was  sympathy  for  the  wedding 
guests,  for  the  bride  and  bridegroom,  whose  supply  of  wine  had 
failed.  So  he  made  the  wine  of  better  quality  than  that  which 
had  already  been  served.  The  ruler  of  the  feast,  who  knew  not 
how  it  came  about,  was  surprised,  and  said  to  the  bridegroom 
that,  contrary  to  custom,  he  was  furnishing  the  good  wine  last, 
after  the  worse  had  been  "well  drunk."1  And  Jesus  made  a  large 
quantity  of  this  excellent  wine  by  a  miracle.  The  Evangelist 
John  relates  that  there  were  "six  water  pots  of  stone,  containing 
two  or  three  measures  apiece."2  As  each  measure  or  firkin  holds 
nine  imperial  gallons,  the  miracle  produced  a  total  of  more  than 
100  gallons  of  wine.  On  this  occasion  Jesus  made  not  only 
wine,  but  had  it  dispensed  to  the  wedding  guests.  There  were 
probably  several  hundreds  of  these  present,  and  a  large  quantity 
of  wine  was  needed  for  their  entertainment.  It  must  be  taken 
for  granted  that  the  wine  was  used  moderately,  all  the  more  so 
since  the  presence  of  the  Savior  would  have  discountenanced  any 
manner  of  excess.  While  the  Evangelist  does  not  mention  that 
Jesus  partook  of  the  wine,  there  is  every  reason  to  suppose  that 
He  did;  for  He  would  hardly  have  approved  in  others  what  He 
could  not  do  Himself.  That  would  have  been  very  poor  moral 
teaching  from  the  Savior  of  the  world.  The  Greek  word  for  wine, 
"oinos"  means  unmistakably  fermented  grape  juice.  Even  if  it 
is  taken  in  a  generic  sense,  including  all  kinds  of  wine,  it  would 
bar  "unfermented  grape  juice,"  for  that  is  not  yet  wine.  So 


Protestant  versions: 

1  _"Well  drunk."— John  2:10. 

2  — "And  there  were  set  there  six  waterpots  of  stone,  after  the  manner  of 

the  purifying  of  the  Jews,  containing  two  or  three  firkins  apiece/' 
—  John  2:6. 


16  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

also  it  is  gratuitous  to  maintain  that  this  miraculous  wine  was 
un fermented  grape  juice,  because  it  did  not  have  time  to  ferment. 
Was  it  not  just  as  easy  for  the  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth  to 
change  water  into  fermented,  as  into  un  fermented  grape  juice? 

Christ's  sanction  of  the  moderate  drinking  of  wine  becomes 
still  more  obvious  from  the  words  which  He  addressed  to  the 
Pharisees  and  lawyers  (Luke  7:33-34)  :  "For  John  the  Baptist 
came  neither  eating  bread  nor  drinking  wine;  and  ye  say,  He 
hath  a  devil.  The  Son  of  Man  is  come  eating  and  drinking: 
and  you  say:  Behold,  a  man  that  is  a  glutton  and  a  drinker  of 
wine,  a  friend  of  publicans  and  sinners  I"1  The  contrast  the 
Savior  draws  between  John  the  Baptist  and  Himself  is  strikingly 
definite.  John  did  not  drink  (for  he  was  a  Nazarene),  but  the 
Son  of  Man  is  come  drinking  wine.  Again  the  Greek  "oinos"  is 
used  for  wine  in  the  original  text. 

At  the  Last  Supper,  Jesus  used  bread  and  wine.  He  called 
wine  "the  fruit  of  the  vine,"  which,  as  already  stated,  is  the 
Jewish  formula  for  wine  at  the  Feast  of  the  Passover.  One  of 
the  strongest  proofs  that  He  used  fermented  grape  juice  is  that 
in  all  Christian  churches  up  to  the  recent  prohibition  period  in 
American  history,  no  other  was  used  for  sacramental  purposes. 
It  is  the  indisputable  testimony  of  all  ages,  handed  down  from 
generation  to  generation.  At  the  present  day  fermented  grape 
juice  is  still  used  at  the  mass  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  and 
the  Greek  Churches,  also  in  the  administration  of  the  Lord's 
Supper  in  the  Anglican  and  Protestant  Episcopal,  the  Lutheran 
and  German  Free  Evangelical  denominations.  Only  the  so-called 
Evangelical  Churches  have  put  a  new  construction  on  what  con- 
stitutes sacramental  wine  (materia  sacramenti),  although  it  lacks 
entirely  the  support  of  Scripture  and  historic  testimony. 

Passing  on  to  the  subject  of  temperance  in  the  apostolic  days 
we  find  that  St.  Paul  recommended  the  moderate  drinking  of 


Protestant  version: 

1 — "For  John  the  Baptist  came  neither  eating  bread  nor  drinking  wine; 
and  ye  say,  He  hath  a  devil.  The  Son  of  Man  is  come  eating  and 
drinking;  and  ye  say,  Behold  a  gluttonous  man,  and  a  wine  bibber, 
a  friend  of  publicans  and  sinners." —  Luke  7  :33-34. 


TEMPERANCE  IN  THE  NEW  LAW  17 

wine  to  Timothy,  saying:  "Do  not  still  drink  water,  but  use  a 
little  wine  for  thy  stomach's  sake  and  thy  frequent  infirmities." 
(I  Tim.  5:23.)1  The  wine  is  "oinos,"  fermented  grape  juice. 
His  advice  brings  to  mind  the  last  sentence  in  the  Second  Book 
of  Maccabees,  which  is  numbered  among  the  Apocrypha  by  Prot- 
estants, but  considered  canonical  Scripture  by  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church :  "For  as  it  is  hurtful  to  drink  always  wine,  or  always 
water,  but  .pleasant  to  use  sometimes  the  one  and  sometimes  the 
other."  VIp  Ecclesiasticus  too  we  read:  "Wine  taken  with 
sobriety  is  equal  life  to  men:  if  thou  drink  it  moderately,  thou 
shalt  be  sober.  Wine  was  created  from  the  beginning  to  make 
men  joyful  and  not  to  make  them  drunk.  Wine,  drunken  with 
moderation,  is  the  joy  of  the  soul  and  the  heart.  Sober  drinking 
is  health  to  soul  and  body."  And  again:  "A  concert  of  music 
in  a  banquet  of  wine  is  as  a  carbuncle  set  in  gold.  As  a  signet 
of  an  emerald  in  a  work  of  gold :  so  is  the  melody  of  music  with 
pleasant  and  moderate  wine."  (Ecclesiasticus  31,  32.) 


Protestant  version : 

1  — "Drink  no  longer  water,  but  use  a.  little  wine  for  thy  stomach's  sake 
and  thine  often  infirmities  " —  I  Tim.  5  :23. 


V. 

TEMPERANCE  OF  THE  EARLY 
CHRISTIANS 

THE  fact  that  temperance,  and  not  abstinence,  was  in  vogue 
among  the  Christians  of  the  apostolic  times  is  further  pat- 
ent from  the  precept  which  St.  Paul  gives  to  the  deacons  and 
the  aged.  In  I  Tim.  3  :8  he  says :  "The  deacons  must  not  be 
given  to  much  wine."1  To  the  aged  men  (Titus  2:2)  :  'That 
the  aged  men  be  sober,  prudent,"2  and  to  the  aged  women  (Titus 
2:3)  :  "That  the  aged  women  be  not  given  to  much  wine."3  He 
requires  them  to  abstain  from  excessive  quantities  of  wine — "much 
wine" — by  the  very  terms  of  which  he  does  not  condemn  its 
moderate  use,  which  is  equivalent  to  being  "sober,  prudent."  In 
both  instances  he  employs  the  Greek  word,  "oinos,"  the  fer- 
mented nature  of  which  can  not  be  questioned.  There  would  not 
have  been  any  necessity  of  warning  them  against  much  wine,  if 
he  had  intended  to  speak  of  unfermented  grape  juice.  When  he 
defines  the  qualifications  of  a  bishop  by  saying  (I  Tim.  3:2-3): 
"It  behooveth  therefore  a  bishop  to  be  blameless — not  given  to 
wine,"4  he  again  admonishes  against  its  excessive  indulgence. 
In  fact  he  inveighs  only  against  its  abuse  whensoever  he  touches 
upon  the  subject. 

The  Apostle  Peter  follows  out  the  same  idea,  when  he  says 
(I  Peter  4:3)  :  "For  the  time  past  is  sufficient  to  have  fulfilled 
the  will  of  the  Gentiles,  for  them  who  have  walked  in  riotousness, 
lusts,  excess  of  wine,  revellings,  banquetings  and  unlawful  wor- 
shipping of  idols."5  Here  too  only  the  excess  of  wine  is  held  in 


Protestant  versions : 

1  — "The  deacons  must  not  be  given  to  much  wine." —  I  Tim.  3  :3. 

2  — "That  the  aged  men  be  sober,  temperate." —  Titus  2 :2. 

3  — "That  the  aged  women  be  not  given  to  much  wine." — Titus  2  :3. 

4  —"A  bishop  then  must  be  blameless  —  not  given  to  wine."—  I  Tim.  3  :2-3. 
5 — "For  the  time  past  of  our  life  may  suffice  us  to  have  wrought  the  wilV 

of  the  Gentiles,  when  we  walked  in  lasciviousness,  lusts  excess  of 
wine,  revellings,  banquetings  and  abominable  idolatries." —  I  Peter 
4:3. 


TEMPERANCE  OF  THE  EARLY  CHRISTIANS  19 

abhorrence,  as  practiced  by  the  Gentiles,  plainly  indicating  that  its 
moderate  use  was  common  among  the  Christians.  This  view  is 
also  expressed  by  St.  Paul  when  he  writes  to  the  Ephesians 
(Ephes.  5:18):  "And  be  not  drunk  with  wine,  wherein  is 
luxury"1 —  that  is,  wine  taken  to  excess. 

An  earlier  occurrence  throws  light  on  the  same  subject. 
When  the  apostles,  as  it  is  related  in  Acts,  received  the  Holy 
Ghost  "and  they  began  to  speak  with  diverse  tongues*'2  before 
the  assembled  crowd,  and  "every  man  heard  them  speak  in  his 
own  tongue,"3  some,  mocking  them,  said :  "These  men  are  full 
of  new  wine."4  But  Peter  standing  up  made  reply :  "For  these 
are  not  drunk,  as  you  suppose,  seeing  it  is  but  the  third  hour  of 
the  day."5  It  is  not  necessary  to  show  beyond  the  evidence  of 
the  narrative  that  this  crowd  regarded  the  apostles  as  drunk  from 
the  effects  of  new  wine  ("gleucos").  New  wine,  although  it  is 
sweet,  has  decidedly  intoxicating  quality.  And  the  motley 
throng,  representing  many  nationalities  marvelling  at  the  poly- 
glot miracle,  were  mistaken  in  their  impression  that  it  was  the 
result  of  intoxicating  drink,  but  they  were  correct  in  predicting 
inebriating  effects  of  "new  wine,"  when  it  is  taken  to  excess. 
The  incident  altogether  furnishes  proof  that  wine  was  in  com- 
mon use  in  those  days.  The  same  usage  is  illustrated  by  the 
words  of  Christ :  "And  no  man  putteth  new  wine  into  old 
bottles :  otherwise  the  new  wine  will  break  the  bottles,  and  it  will 
be  spilled,  and  the  bottles  will  be  lost.  But  new  wine  must  be 
put  into  new  bottles;  and  both  are  preserved."6  (Luke  5:37- 
38.)  The  Savior  alludes  here  to  the  general  custom  with  respect 
to  the  preservation  of  wine.  When  St.  Paul  admonishes  the 


Protestant  versions: 

1 — "And  be  not  drunk  with  wine,  wherein  is  excess." — Ephes.  5:18. 

2  — "And  began  to  speak  with  other  tongues." — Acts  2  :4. 

3 — "Every  man  heard  them  speak  in  his  own  language." — Acts  2:6. 

4 — "These  men  are  full  of  new  wine." — Acts  2:13. 

5  — "For  these  are  not  drunken,  as  ye  suppose,  seeing  it  is  but  the  third 

hour  of  the  day." — Acts  2:15. 

6  — "And  no  man  putteth  new  wine  into  old  bottles ;    else  the  new  wine 

will  burst  the  bottles,  and  be  spilled,  and  the  bottles  shall  perish. 
But  new  wine  must  be  put  .into  new  bottles ;  and  both  are  pre- 
served."— Luke  5 :37-38. 


20  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

Romans  (Rom.  14:21)  :  "It  is  good  not  to  eat  flesh,  and  not 
to  drink  wine,  nor  anything  whereby  thy  brother  is  offended  or 
scandalized,  or  made  weak,"1  he  requests  them  to  respect  the 
opinions  of  their  fellows,  and  to  refrain  from  wine,  while  in 
their  company.  It  is  a  counsel  of  charity  and  forbearance,  and 
has  not  the  force  of  a  precept.  Otherwise  it  would  have  in- 
cluded as  well  abstinence  from  meat  for  all  time  to  come,  and 
that  would  have  been  preposterous.  It  shows  conclusively, 
however,  that  wine  was  used  as  a  beverage  by  many  Christians 
of  the  apostolic  age. 

Ralph  Barnes  Grindrod,  in  his  prize  essay  on  intemperance, 
which  was  awarded  the  first  premium  of  one  hundred  sovereigns 
by  the  New  British  and  Foreign  Temperance  Society,  says:  "It 
appears  fair  to  conclude  that  the  primitive  Christians  always 
diluted  fermented  wine  with  water."  He  explains  that  this  was 
done  for  the  purpose  of  adding  "an  agreeable  taste  to  the  water," 
which  "was  often  difficult  to  be  obtained,  and  of  a  bad  quality." 
It  appears  that  this  ancient  custom  in  a  slightly  different  form 
has  been  preserved  up  to  the  present  day,  "wine  and  seltzer" 
being  a  wholesome  drink,  especially  in  the  hot  summer  days. 
Mr.  Grindrod  also  admits  that  aged  persons  were  permitted  the 
moderate  use  of  weak  wines,  when  sufficiently  diluted  with 
water.  Abbe  Fleury,  a  Catholic  writer,  speaking  of  the  fast  days 
of  the  early  Christians,  says :  "All,  in  general,  on  their  fast  days, 
abstained  from  drinking  wine  and  eating  flesh."  Of  course 
this  was  fermented  grape  juice;  otherwise  it  need  not  have  been 
abstained  from,  and  it  was  commonly  used  outside  of  fast  days. 

That  the  use,  and  unfortunately  sometimes  abuse,  of  wine, 
was  known  among  the  earliest  Christians  is  obvious  from  the 
charge  of  impropriety  made  by  St.  Paul  against  the  Corinthians. 
He  tells  them  (I  Cor.  11:20,  22)  :  "When  you  come  therefore 
together  into  one  place,  it  is  not  now  to  eat  the  Lord's  Supper. 


Protestant  version : 

1  — "It  is  good  neither  to  eat  flesh,  nor  to  drink  wine,  nor  anything 
whereby  thy  brother  stumbleth,.  or  is  offended,  or  is  made  weak." — 
Rom.  14:21. 


TEMPERANCE  OF  THE  EARLY  CHRISTIANS  21 

For  everyone  taketh  before  his  own  supper  to  eat.  And  one 
indeed  is  hungry  and  another  is  drunk.  What,  have  you  not 
houses  to  eat  and  to  drink  in  ?  Or  despise  ye  the  Church  of  God  ; 
and  put  them  to  shame  that  have  not  ?  What  shall  I  say  to  you  ? 
Do  I  praise  ?  In  this  I  praise  you  not."1  At  these  charity  feasts, 
which  preceded  the  celebration  of  the  Eucharistic  sacrifice,  there 
were  some  who  drank  to  excess,  so  that  they  became  "drunk," 
and  the  apostle  condemns  the  abuse,  not  the  moderate  use  of  wine. 

This  scriptural  conception  of  temperance,  in  all  things,  in 
food  as  well  as  drink,  so  consistently  presented  both  in  the  Old 
and  New  Testament,  was  uniformly  carried  out  in  the  early 
Christian  era.  The  fathers  of  the  primitive  church,  from  Clem- 
ent of  Alexandria  and  Origen,  down  to  Ambrose  and  Augustine, 
denounce  drunkenness,  but  commend  the  moderate  use  of  wine. 
Clement  of  Alexandria  warns  the  young  not  to  use  wine,  but  to 
those  of  maturer  age  he  says :  "Toward  evening,  about  supper 
time,  wine  may  be  used.  But  we  must  not  go  on  to  intemperate 
potations."  (Clem.  Alex.  Paed.,  2:2.)  There  can  be  no  doubt 
that  he  speaks  of  alcoholic  grape  juice ;  otherwise,  after  allowing 
adults  to  use  it,  he  would  not  warn  them  against  its  intemperate 
indulgence.  It  is  the  same  view  that  the  Roman  Catholic  Church, 
the  Greek  Church,  the  Anglican  and  Protestant  Episcopal  Church 
and  several  Protestant  Evangelical  bodies  have  followed  out  up 
to  the  present  day  with  regard  to  the  subject  of  temperance : 
that  is,  the  strictly  moderate  use  of  alcoholic  liquors  is  legitimate 
and  within  the  bounds  of  Christian  standards.  St.  Augustine, 
vehement  as  he  was  in  his  denunciations  of  drunkenness,  was  also 
emphatic  in  his  approval  of  a  moderate  use  of  wine.  No  better 
proof  of  this  is  needed  than  the  fact  that  he  wrote  voluminously 
against  the  Manichseans,  who  forbade  the  drinking  of  wine,  be- 


Protestant  version : 

1  -  "When  ye  come  together  therefore  into  one  place,  this  is  not  to  eat 
the  Lord's  Supper.  For  in  eating  everyone  taketh  before  other 
his  own  supper:  and  one  is  hungry,  and  another  is  drunken. 
What?  have  ye  not  houses  to  eat  and  to  drink  in?  or  despise  ye 
the  church  of  God,  and  shame  >them  that  have  not?  What  shall  I 
say  to  you?  Shall  I  praise  you  in  this?  I  praise  you  not." 


22  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

cause,  as  they  alleged,  it  was  the  product  of  darkness,  the  source 
of  all  evil.  Is  not  this  old-time  heresy,  condemned  by  the  Chris- 
tian Church  in  the  fifth  century,  being  revamped?  And  is  it  not 
a  rather  striking  analogy  that  while  the  Manichaeans  endeavored 
to  establish  a  religion  combining  Oriental  philosophy  and  Chris- 
tianity, efforts  are  now  being  made  to  graft  the  intemperate  codes 
of  Buddha  and  Mohammed  on  the  temperate  teachings  of  Christ? 


VI. 
ATTITUDE  OF  THE  CATHOLIC  CHURCH 

THE  scriptural  conception  of  temperance  has  always  been 
upheld  by  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  (present  member- 
ship estimated  300,000,000).  Her  doctors  and  theologians  teach 
on  biblical  grounds  the  necessity  of  temperance  in  eating  and 
drinking;  they  counsel  abstemiousness  and  self-denial,  but  do 
not  approve  a  compulsory  abstinence.  Naturally  the  same  views 
are  propagated  in  the  Catholic  seminaries.  The  church  endorses 
enthusiastically  the  establishment  of  total  abstinence  societies, 
but  resorts  to  no  measures  to  compel  membership. 

A  Catholic  Total  Abstinence  Union  was  founded  in  the  city 
of  Baltimore  in  1872,  and  counts  at  present  nearly  200,000  mem- 
bers. A  Total  Abstinence  League  has  found  wide  circulation 
among  members  of  the  priesthood  and  seminarians  of  the  country, 
newly  ordained  priests  usually  pledging  themselves  to  abstain 
from  intoxicating  drink  for  a  period  of  five  years.  All  this  has 
been  highly  exemplary,  edifying,  and  productive  of  much  good; 
but  it  is  entirely  a  free-will  offering,  and  has  nothing  in  common 
with  compulsory  methods.  The  Third  Council  of  Baltimore 
(1884-5)  says  in  one  of  its  decrees:  "We  heartily  approve  and 
commend  the  praiseworthy  custom  of  many,  who  in  our  day 
abstain  entirely  from  the  use  of  intoxicating  liquors,  thus  to 
overcome  more  certainly  the  vice  of  intemperance."  Total  ab- 
stinence is  warmly  commended,  but  not  commanded :  on  the  con- 
trary, liberty  of  conscience  in  matters  of  choice,  as  to  drinking 
moderately,  or  abstaining,  is  uniformly  implied.  The  decree  con- 
tinues along  the  same  lines  of  moderation,  touching  the  liquor 
traffic,  in  the  following  sentence:  "We  warn  our  faithful  peo- 
ple, who  sell  intoxicating  liquors,  to  consider  seriously  by  how 
many  and  how  serious  dangers  and  occasions  of  sin  their  busi- 
ness, although  not  unlawful  in  itself,  is  surrounded."  It  is  well 
to  note  here  that  those,  who  sell  intoxicating:  licmors,  are  ad- 
dressed as  "faithful  people"  of  the  church,  and,  while  the  evils 
and  dangers  of  the  traffic  are  deprecated,  and  Catholics  are  dis- 


24  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

suaded  from  engaging  in  it,  it  is  declared  to  be  "not  unlawful  in 
itself;"  nor  is  there  the  slightest  sanction  of  compulsory  laws. 
Gospel  temperance  is  encouraged  to  the  fullest  extent,  and  that 
is  all.  If  there  were  any  doubt  as  to  the  sense  of  this  decree,  it 
would  be  removed  by  the  following  statement,  recently  made  by 
Cardinal  Gibbons,  who  presided  over  the  Council  of  Baltimore 
as  Delegate  Apostolic:  "I  am  persuaded  that  it  is  practically 
impossible  to  put  prohibition  into  effect  in  any  large  community  ; 
and  the  best  -means,  therefore,  to  promote  temperance  is  to  limit 
the  number  of  saloons  by  high  license."  Right  Rev.  Mgr.  Franz 
Goller,  of  St.  Louis,  says :  "The  Pope  certainly  does  believe  in 
temperance,  that  is,  moderation  in  all  things,  but  not  absolute 
prohibition.  That  is  not  the  spirit  of  freedom,  but  of  autocratic 
government.  The  Holy  Father  himself  takes  a  glass  of  wine, 
and  believes  that  men  should  be  allowed  to  use  their  own  judg- 
ment in  what  they  should  eat  and  what  they  should  drink,  and 
rot  have  other  men  decide  such  matters  for  them."  Pope  Leo 
XIII,  it  is  well  known,  cultivated  a  choice  grape  of  his  own  in 
the  Vatican  gardens,  and  drank  in  strict  moderation  of  its  de- 
licious wine.  Yet  he  did  not  hesitate  to  approve  total  abstinence 
societies,  because  they  encouraged  voluntary  self-denial  in  accord- 
ance with  the  Gospel  spirit.  In  a  letter  to  Archbishop  Ireland, 
he  says:  "We  esteem  worthy  of  all  commendation  the  noble 
resolve  of  your  pious  associations,  by  which  they  pledge  them- 
selves to  abstain  totally  from  every  kind  of  intoxicating  drink." 
A  Catholic  priest  can  not  be,  strictly  speaking,  a  total  ab- 
stainer, because  he  must  drink  alcoholic  wine  at  every  mass  he 
says,  and  that  may  be  almost  daily.  He  could  not  sanely  advo- 
cate prohibition,  which,  strictly  carried  out,  would  make  the  pro- 
curing of  wine  —  materia  sacramenti  —  an  impossibility.  And 
yet,  outside  of  this  sacramental  use,  which  is  of  necessity,  hun- 
dreds of  priests  lead  a  life  of  abstinence,  and  by  their  personal 
example  and  evangelical  labors,  become  veritable  apostles  of 
temperance. 


VII. 
THE  PROTESTANT  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH 

THE  Anglican  Church  and  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  of 
the  United  States  stand  for  temperance  and  sobriety,  not 
for  compulsory  abstinence.        (Estimated  number  of  communi- 
cants, 22,000,000.) 

At  the  General  Convention  of  the  House  of  Bishops  in 
Philadelphia  in  1883,  unanimous  endorsement  was  given  the 
Church  Temperance  Society,  which  they  declared  "rests  upon  the 
scriptural  principle  that  temperance  is  the  law  of  the  Gospel,  and 
total  abstinence  a  rule  of  expediency,  a  measure  of  necessity,  or 
an  act  of  self-abnegation  in  certain  cases,  thus  avoiding  any 
breach  of  the  great  la^v  of  Christian  liberty."  The  lines  are 
forcibly  drawn.  Temperance  is  enjoined  by  the  Gospel;  total 
abstinence  is  not,  and  regarded  only  as  a  rule  of  expediency. 
Nothing  is  required  that  would  violate  the  great  law  of  Christian 
liberty.  This  certainly  implies  that  compulsory  abstinence  does 
in  effect  offend  against  this  law,  and  is  deserving  of  condemna- 
tion. The  basis  of  the  Church  Temperance  Society  is  defined 
as  follows:  "Recognizing  temperance  as  the  law  of  the  Gospel, 
and  total  abstinence  as  a  rule  of  conduct,  essential  in  certain 
cases,  and  highly  desirable  in  others ;  and  fully  and  freely  accord- 
ing to  every  man  the  right  to  decide,  in  the  exercise  of  his 
Christian  liberty,  whether  or  not  he  will  adopt  said  rule,  this 
society  lays  down  as  the  basis,  on  which  it  rests,  and  from  which 
its  work  shall  be  conducted :  union  and  co-operation  on  perfectly 
equal  terms  for  the  promotion  of  temperance  between  those  who 
use  temperately,  and  those  who  abstain  entirely  from  intoxicat- 
ing drinks  as  beverages."  Could  there  be  anything  broader  or 
more  practical  in  Christian  fellowship  than  this  declaration,  rati- 
fied by  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  of  the  United  States? 
The  strictly  moderate  user  of  alcoholic  drink  and  the  total  ab- 
stainer are  joined  together  in  the  same  cause  of  Christian  tem- 
perance, and  both  are  left  the  full  enjoyment  of  Christian  liberty. 


26  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

The  Episcopal  bishops  atid  clergy  emphasize  this  attitude  of 
their  church  everywhere.  The  late  Bishop  Potter  established  a 
subway  saloon  in  New  York  City,  where  alcoholic  beverages 
were  sold,  with  a  view  to  their  exclusively  moderate  use  without 
unlawful  or  objectionable  features,  and  with  appointments  in  the 
nature  of  a  public  clubhouse  for  workingmen.  Whatever  its 
success  or  failure  may  have  been,  the  undertaking  had  a  most 
praiseworthy  motive,  although  the  good  bishop  was  promptly 
decried  by  extremists  as  an  ally  of  the  liquor  traffic,  and  a  pro- 
moter of  drunkenness.  Bishop  Potter  is  on  record  as  follows : 
"Our  prohibitory  laws,  whether  we  put  them  in  operation  on  one 
day  only,  or  on  all  days,  are  as  stupid  as  they  are  ineffectual." 

Bishop  Webb,  of  Milwaukee:  "The  Episcopal  clergy  is  in- 
clined to  regard  with  leniency  the  saloon  in  all  its  phases,  so  long 
as  the  saloon  is  not  detrimental,  on  its  face,  to  public  interest  and 
morals.  I  believe  that  the  general  tendency  of  the  Episcopal 
clergy  is  to  favor,  rather  than  oppose,  the  well-regulated  saloon. 
The  saloon,  when  at  its  best,  certainly  has  many  things  in  its 
favor.  It  is  a  gathering-place  of  people,  and  in  many  places  of 
good  people." 

Bishop  Moreland,  of  California:  "Another  false  notion  is 
that  the  abuse  of  wine  prohibits  the  use  of  it.  Some  people  are 
injured  by  drinking  coffee.  Must  all  the  world  then  give  up  its 
morning  cup?  It  never  helps  any  cause  to  raise  false  issues 
about  it,  or  defend  it  with  unsound  arguments." 

Rev.  Dr.  Rainsford,  of  New  York,  does  not  mince  his  words 
when  he  says:  "To  drink  is  no  sin.  Jesus  Christ  drank.  To 
keep  a  saloon  is  no  sin.  And  any  policy  that  claims  the  name 
of  Christ,  or  does  not  claim  His  name,  that  deals  with  the  well- 
nigh  universal  taste  of  man  for  alcohol  on  the  basis  of  law  and 
order  alone,  can  not  commend  itself  to  the  best  intelligence,  and 
is  doomed  to  fail." 

Bishop  Grafton,  of  Wisconsin,  has  this  to  say:  "I  can  not 
see  the  benefits  to  be  derived  from  compulsory  abstinence.  Rabid 
temperance  workers  have  accomplished  very  little  toward  destroy- 
ing the  drink  evil." 


THE  PROTESTANT  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH  27 

Very  recently  at  a  gathering  of  Anglican  clergy,  peers  and 
members  of  Parliament  in  London,  presided  over  by  Lord  Hals- 
bury,  it  was  decided  to  establish  a  True  Temperance  Association, 
for  the  purpose  of  restoring  the  English  public  house  to  its  tra- 
ditional use  as  a  place  for  reasonable  recreation  and  temperate 
refreshment.  The  aim  of  the  movement,  says  the  London  Ex- 
press, is  to  unite  the  moderate  people  of  the  British  Empire 
against  the  unreasonable  demands  of  prohibitionists,  and  en- 
courage the  open  family  resorts  of  continental  Europe. 


VIII. 
OTHER  CHRISTIAN  CHURCHES 

THE  Greek  Church,  the  German  Lutheran  and  Free  Evan- 
gelical Protestant  Churches  in  the  United  States,  the  Prot- 
estant State  Churches  of  Europe  all  discard  compulsory  absti- 
nence as  contrary  to  Christian  liberty,  and  impracticable.  (Es- 
timated membership,  150,000,000.) 

Prominent  ministers  of  other  Christian  churches  defend  the 
rights  of  the  strictly  moderate  drinker  against  compulsory 
methods.  Rev.  Lyman  Abbott  makes  the  following  statement: 
"It  was  not  the  method  of  Jesus.  He  lived  in  an  age  of  total 
abstinence  societies,  and  did  not  join  them.  He  emphasized  the 
distinction  between  His  methods  and  those  of  John  the  Baptist; 
that  John  came  neither  eating  nor  drinking;  the  Son  of  Man 
came  eating  and  drinking.  He  condemned  drunkenness,  but 
never  in  a  single  instance  lifted  up  His  voice  in  condemnation  of 
drinking.  On  the  contrary,  He  commenced  His  public  ministry 
by  making,  as  a  rule,  wine  in  considerable  quantity,  and  of  fine 
quality,  and  this  apparently  only  to  add  to  the  joyous  festivities 
of  a  wedding." 

Rev.  Dr.  Howard  Crosby,  of  the  Presbyterian  Church,  goes 
so  far  as  to  say  that  "Prohibition  is  the  greatest  enemy  to  a  much- 
needed  reform." 

Rev.  Carl  Eissfeldt,  of  the  Lutheran  Orphan  Home,  Mil- 
waukee, formulated  the  following  declaration  of  the  German 
Lutheran  clergy  at  the  United  Lutheran  Conference  of  Wiscon- 
sin (May,  1909)  :  "We  can  not  join  hands  with  the  prohibition- 
ists, because  their  principle  is  wrong,  insofar  as  they  mix  good 
use  and  misuse  of  things,  that  in  themselves  are  gifts  of  God. 
We  regard  this  as  a  wrong  principle,  to  prohibit  on  account  of 
misuse  the  use,  manufacture  and  sale  of  anything  that  in  itself 
is  not  bad."  For  the  same  reason  they  condemn  the  Anti-Saloon 
League. 


IX. 

BENEFITS  OF  GOSPEL  TEMPERANCE 

WHILE  compulsory  abstinence  is  without  any  scriptural 
sanction,  gospel  temperance,  or  the  method  of  moral  sua- 
sion, has  it  in  fullest  measure.  Its  conquests  make  up  many 
golden  pages  in  the  history  of  social  reforms  and  national  bless- 
ings ;  and  they  are  still  accomplishing  an  incalculable  amount  of 
good  for  mankind.  There  can  be  no  hesitancy  in  eulogizing  a 
plan  that  has  benefited  millions  of  human  beings  without  infring- 
ing on  the  rights  of  individual  conscience  or  personal  liberty. 
Thus  the  great  temperance  apostles  became  benefactors  of  the 
race.  Father  Theobald  Mathew  administered  the  pledge  to  nearly 
six  millions  of  his  countrymen  in  Ireland  and  in  the  United 
States.  Neal  Dow,  John  B.  Gough,  Francis  Murphy,  a  strong 
advocate  of  high  license,  and  others  of  lesser  fame,  waged  suc- 
cessful campaigns  against  intemperance,  and  by  their  eloquence 
prevailed  upon  hundreds  of  thousands,  many  of  them  habitual 
drunkards,  to  abstain  from  intoxicating  drink.  John  B.  Gough 
was  one  of  the  staunchest  advocates  of  moral  suasion,  who  placed 
its  importance  and  results  high  above  the  possible  achievements 
of  compulsory  abstinence. 


X. 

THE  EXCELLENCE  OF  ABSTINENCE 

THE  excellence  of  abstinence  is  not  a  matter  of  doubt  or 
controversy.  In  the  old  law  the  Nazarites,  who  were  set 
apart  to  the  service  of  the  Lord,  were  abstainers,  among  them 
Samson  and  Samuel.  The  Rechabites  were  eulogized  for  being 
faithful  to  their  vows.  The  priests  abstained  during  their  official 
ministrations  in  the  tabernacle.  Kings  and  princes  were  coun- 
seled not  to  touch  wine  or  strong  drink  while  administering  jus- 
tice. John  the  Baptist  was  a  Nazarite  —  he  drank  "no  wine  nor 
strong  drink,"1  and  Christ  said  of  him:  "There  hath  not  risen 
among  them  that  are  born  of  women  a  greater  than  John  the 
Baptist."2  Christ  was  the  divine  protagonist  of  abstinence,  as 
well  as  of  temperance.  He  did  not  frown  down  moderation  in 
drink  at  the  marriage  of  Cana,  where  he  changed  water  into  wine 
for  the  entertainment  of  the  guests,  but  His  higher  counsel  en- 
couraged abstemiousness  and  self-denial.  His  methods  were  gen- 
tleness, kindness  and  moral  suasion;  he  used  no  compulsion. 

The  abstainer's  pre-eminence  is  apparent,  because  he  not  only 
perfects  the  Christian  character  in  himself,  but  draws  others  to 
better  lives  by  the  force  of  his  example.  The  reformed  drunkard 
preaches  a  hundred,  nay,  a  thousand  sermons  daily,  and  is  likely 
to  make  more  sincere  converts  to  the  cause  of  abstinence  than  all 
the  compulsory  laws  in  the  land. 

Physiologically  speaking,  the  abstainer  is  absolutely  secure. 
He  runs  no  risk  of  contracting  disease  by  reason  of  his  drinking 
habits.  And  while  the  strictly  moderate  use  of  alcoholic  liquors 
may  not  be  harmful,  and  even  may  be  beneficial  to  health,  there 
is  nothing  in  physiological  science  to  show  that  a  normally  healthy 
man  needs  their  aid  at  all.  Water  was  intended  by  Nature  to 


Protestant  versions: 

1 — "Neither  wine  nor  strong  drink."— St.  Luke  1:15. 
2—" Among  those  that  are  born  of  women  there  is  not  a  greater  prophet 
than  John  the  Baptist."—  St.  Luke  7  :28. 


THE  EXCELLENCE  OF  ABSTINENCE  31 

quench  the  thirst  of  man  and  beast,  to  cleanse  and  purify  his 
system,  and  in  its  functions  it  has  not  been,  nor  is  it  likely  to  be, 
superseded  by  any  artificial  substitute.  Its  sparkling  drops  are 
welcomed  alike  by  the  exhausted  traveler  in  the  oasis  of  the 
desert  sands,  and  the  vivacious  guest  at  the  banquet  table.  It 
suits  all  ages  and  conditions  —  the  infant,  the  child,  the  adult, 
the  aged ;  the  rich  and  the  poor,  the  master  and  his  slave.  It  is 
the  gift  showered  down  from  the  heavens  upon  all  —  without" 
stint  or  favor.  It  is  the  liquid  diamond  without  price.  Even 
alcohol,  to  be  physiologically  permissable  or  helpful,  must  be 
tempered  by  its  copious  admixture. 

From  the  standpoint  of  self-control,  while  it  may  be  difficult 
to  determine  who  has  more  of  it,  the  abstainer  or  strictly  moder- 
ate drinker,  it  is  certain  that  the  powers  of  inhibition  are  strength- 
ened in  proportion  to  the  continuation  of  abstinence.  The  re- 
formed drunkard,  particularly  in  the  first  stages  of  his  abstention, 
is  liable  to  break  his  pledge,  but  the  man  or  woman  who  has 
always  been  moderate  is  likely  to  find  much  less  difficulty  in 
remaining  abstemious.  The  most  constant  abstainers  are  re- 
cruited from  the  ranks  of  the  strictly  moderate  drinkers  who 
have  already  acquired  habits  of  self-restraint.  Strict  modera- 
tion certainly  does  not  encourage  pauperism,  insanity  or  crime, 
but  abstinence  is  the  highest  guarantee  and  safeguard  that  these 
greatest  monsters  of  human  ills,  insofar  as  they  are  bred  by 
intemperance,  shall  cease  to  exist.  Temperance  is  a  virtue,  but 
abstinence  is  self-sacrifice  that  reaches  out  for  the  salvation  of 
others. 


XI. 

THE  NATURAL  LAW 

THE  strictly  moderate  drinker's  ethical  position  is  defended 
not  only  by  the  Scriptures  and  Christian  churches,  but  by 
natural  law.  This  law  is  every  man's  birthright  and  is  written 
in  the  human  heart,  enlightening  and  guiding  the  uncivilized  in 
the  absence  of  statutory  law,  and  determining  the  fundamental 
value  of  statutes  among  the  civilized.  It  is  God's  silent  voice, 
declaring  the  sense  of  right  and  wrong;  and  all  expressions  of 
positive  divine  or  civil  law  must  be  conformable  to  its  utterances. 
There  can  be  no  discord  between  them  without  disturbing  the 
very  idea  of  God,  for  He  can  not  contradict  himself.  Kent  de- 
fines natural  law:  "Those  fit  and  just  rules  of  conduct  which 
the  Creator  has  prescribed  to  man,  as  a  dependent  and  social 
being,  and  which  are  to  be  ascertained  from  the  deductions  of 
right  reason."  It  will  be  universally  conceded  that  one  of  these 
laws  of  Nature  is  that  every  man  <may  eat  or  drink  whatever  he 
pleases,  so  long  as  he  does  not  injure  himself  thereby,  or  inter- 
fere with  the  rights  of  others.  Now,  by  a  strictly  moderate  use 
of  alcoholic  liquors,  he  well  may  not,  as  we  shall  show,  impair 
his  health  in  the  least;  but,  on  the  contrary,  promote  it;  and 
surely  he  does  not  trespass  on  the  rights  of  others.  Why  should 
he,  therefore,  be  forced  to  abstain  from  the  exercise  of  his  natural 
right?  The  late  Henry  Ward  Beecher  put  this  very  pointedly 
in  the  following  sentence:  "If  you  say  to  me  that  I  ought  not 
to  drink,  perhaps  I  would  agree  with  you ;  but  if  you  tell  me  I 
must  not  drink,  I  will  drink,  because  I  have  a  natural  right  to  do 
so  —  to  drink  what  I  please." 


XII. 

MODERATE  DRINKING  AND  HYGIENE 

WE  NOW  come  to  the  consideration  of  strictly  moderate 
drinking  in  its  relation  to  hygiene,  and  we  shall  inquire 
whether  it  is  compatible  with  health  and  approved  by  physiologi- 
cal science.  In  this  connection  it  will  be  well  to  note  that  in 
1893  a  Committee  of  Fifty,  composed  of  scientists,  educators, 
divines  and  economists,  having  undertaken  a  thorough  investiga- 
tion of  the  American  liquor  problem  in  all  its  phases  and  aspects, 
received,  through  one  of  its  subcommittees  in  charge  of  Dr. 
John  S.  Billings,  answers  from  leading  physicians  in  different 
parts  of  the  world  to  the  various  physiological  questions  put  to 
them  to  cover  this  subject.  A  few  of  these  will  suffice  to  show 
that  a  strictly  moderate  use  of  alcoholic  drink,  daily  or  occasional, 

has  the  strongest  scientific  endorsement 

t 

Prof.  T.  J.  Clouston,  of  Edinburgh,  Scotland:  "Alcohol 
is  a  food,  and  may,  in  a  diluted  form,  be  a  very  valuable  adjunct 
to  ordinary  food,  by  exciting  appetite,  by  improving  digestion, 
and  by  stimulating  certain  nutritive  processes,  as  for  example, 
the  laying  on  of  fat  As  a  luxury,  a  producer  of  subjective  feel- 
ings of  happiness,  and  organic  satisfaction,  it  seems  to  me  to  be 
perfectly  legitimate  if  it  is  used  in  strict  moderation,  and  its 
dangers  are  kept  in  mind  and  avoided."1 

Sir  Michael  Foster,  Professor  of  Physiology  at  Cambridge 
University,  England:  "If  a  number  of  persons  say  that  a  cer- 
tain quantity  of  alcohol  per  diem  seems  to  them  to  be  a  means  of 
keeping  them  in  health  and  vigor,  there  is  nothing  in  our  present 
knowledge  of  physiology  to  lead  one  to  doubt  the  validity  of  the 
conclusions  thus  drawn  from  experience." 

J.  Burdon  Sanderson,  Professor,  of  Physiology,  Oxford 
University,  England:  "I  myself  often  experience  the  advantage 
of  alcohol,  and  the  more  the  older  I  become." 


1 — Physiological  Aspects  of  the  Liquor  Problem,  Vol.  I,  fohn  S.  Billings. 


34  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

Dr.  P.  H.  Pye  Smith,  of  Guy's  Hospital  Medical  School, 
London :  "Temperance  is  much  better  than  abstinence." 

Prof.  Arthur  Gamgee,  Emeritus  Professor  of  Physiology, 
Owens  College,  Manchester,  England:  "The  assertion  that 
alcohol  does  not  supply  energy  to  the  body  is,  as  everyone  must 
admit,  disproved  by  the  experimental  facts  in  our  possession,  and 
it  must  be  admitted  by  all  physiologists,  whose  judgment  is  not 
tainted  by  blind  prejudice,  that  alcohol  must,  therefore,  be  classed 
among  the  articles  of  food." 

Prof.  A.  Dastre,  of  Paris:  "From  the  point  of  view  of 
hygiene,  I  think  that  alcohol,  taken  in  small  and  reasonable  doses, 
in  the  form  of  good  wine  with  meals,  is  an  excellent  thing,  very 
agreeable,  and  entirely  harmless.  'Bonum  vinum  Isetificat  cor 
hominum.' " 

Prof.  Paul  Heger,  of  Brussels:  "I  agree  entirely  with  the 
opinion  of  those  physiologists  who  refuse  to  interdict  the  use  of 
beer  or  wine;  to  prohibit  beer  because  it  contains  a  small  dose  of 
a  poison  which  is  called  alcohol,  would  lead  us  in  the  name  of 
pitiless  logic  to  also  prohibit  tea,  because  it  contains  a  certain 
amount  of  poison,  theine;  to  prohibit  coffee,  which  contains 
caffeine ;  to  prohibit  even  meat  itself,  which  undoubtedly  contains 
organic  poisons." 

Prof.  H.  Kronecker,  of  Bern,  Switzerland,  supplements  his 
endorsement  of  a  temperate  use  of  alcoholic  liquors  by  saying: 
"Wine  drinking  is  forbidden  among  the  Mohammedans,  and  the 
Arabs  have  shown  unquestionable  moral  virtue,  bravery,  shrewd- 
ness, inventive  skill  in  technique,  art  and  science,  but  they  have 
been  utterly  beaten  at  every  point  by  the  wine- drinking  nations 
of  the  West.  What  great  things  have  our  apostles  of  abstinence 
accomplished  in  comparison  with  the  great  friends  of  wine,  such 
as  Byron,  Goethe,  Bismarck?  Helmholz  and  Ludwig  were  also 
friends  of  a  good  drop." 

Prof.  W.  Kuehne,  of  Heidelberg  University:  "When  we 
see  how  many  normal,  hardworking  people  arrive  at  a  ripe  age 


MODERATE  DRINKING  AND  HYGIENE  35 

while  using  these  stimulants  with  discretion,  among  which  I  in- 
clude the  moderate  use  of  alcohol,  one  does  not  find  good  reasons 
for  total  abstinence." 

Prof.  Karl  von  Voit  of  Munich:  "I  agree  with  you  in 
the  opinion  that  a  moderate  use  of  light  alcoholic  beverages,  as 
for  instance  beer,  is  not  injurious  to  health.  I  deem  it,  there- 
fore, an  exaggeration  which  may  often  lead  to  hypocrisy  and  to 
other  bad  results,  if  the  use  of  alcoholic  beverages  even  in  moder- 
ate quantities  is  prohibited." 

American  physiologists  and  physicians  support  this  view  of 
temperance  —  which  is  that  the  strictly  moderate  use  of  alcoholic 
liquors,  as  distinguished  from  total  abstinence,  is  not  injurious 
to  health. 

Prof.  R.  H.  Chittenden,  of  New  Haven,  Conn.,  says:  "I 
also  think  we  are  warranted  in  the  general  statement  that  strictly 
moderate  doses  of  alcohol,  while  not  needed  by  the  healthy  in- 
dividual, are  not  harmful  under  ordinary  conditions  of  life,  and 
that  small  doses  may  even  prove  beneficial,  at  least  under  some 
conditions."  He  also  maintains  that  "We  have  abundant  evi- 
dence that  alcohol  has  a  certain  food  value." 

Prof.  Lafayette  B.  Mendel,  of  New  Haven,  endorses  the 
views  of  the  physiologist,  O.  Funke,  who  pays  the  following 
tribute  to  his  subject :  "It  is  certainly  a  fact  that  many  a  bright, 
fruitful  idea  has  been  born  from  a  large  glass  of  fragrant  Rhine 
wine,  which  perhaps  would  never  have  come  from  the  water  jug 
of  a  vegetarian." 

Prof.  W.  O.  Atwater,  of  Wesleyan  University,  Middletown, 
Conn.,  a  member  of  the  Committee  of  Fifty:  "Alcohol  in 
moderate  quantities  serves  to  a  limited  extent  as  a  food."  He 
adds  that  alcohol  in  excess  "brings  about  various  diseases,  but 
it  does  not  follow  from  this  that,  in  a  smaller  quantity,  it  may  not 
be  harmless  and  even  beneficial." 

Professor  Gaertner  says  in  his  "Manual  of  Hygiene,"  that 
one  quart  of  pure  beer  has  the  food  value  of  3/10  pound  of 
bread  in  carbo-hydrates,  and  of  two  ounces  of  bread,  or  nearly 
one  ounce  of  meat  in  albumen. 


36  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

Dr.  Wm.  H.  Welch,  Professor  of  Pathology,  Johns  Hop- 
kins University:  "It  is  a  matter  of  common  experience  that 
many  persons  drink  beer,  wine  and  spirits  in  moderation  through- 
out a  long  life  without  apparent  impairment  of  the  general 
health." 

The  physiologist,  Bain :  "In  organic  influences  you  are  not 
at  liberty  to  lay  down  the  law  of  concomitant  variations  without 
exception,  or  to  affirm  that  what  is  bad  in  large  quantities  is 
simply  less  bad  when  the  quantity  is  small  There  may  be  pro- 
portions not  only  innocuous,  but  beneficial." 

Dr.  Blessing,  who  accompanied  Nansen's  polar  expedition, 
gives  the  following  experience :  "It  can  do  no  harm  to  rouse 
the  mind  and  courage  by  help  of  a  glass  of  wine." 


XIII. 

INTERNATIONAL  PHYSIOLOGICAL 
CONGRESS 

OF  CUMULATIVE  VALUE  to  the  subject  of  alcohol  and 
hygiene  was  the  International  Physiological  Congress  held 
in  Cambridge  in  1898,  at  one  of  the  sessions  of  which  the  pre- 
siding officer,  Dr.  M.  Foster,  Professor  of  Physiology,  Cambridge 
University,  prepared  a  statement  which  was  signed  by  sixty-two 
of  the  physiologists  and  scientists  gathered  there  from  all  parts 
of  the  world,  only  four  requiring  a  slight  'modification  in  its  word- 
ing, which,  however,  did  not  change  the  force  of  its  conclusion. 
This  statement  reads  as  follows: 

"The  physiological  effects  of  alcohol,  taken  in  diluted  form, 
in  small  doses,  as  indicated  by  the  popular  phrase  'moderate  use 
of  alcohol/  in  spite  of  the  continued  study  of  past  years,  have 
not  as  yet  been  clearly  and  completely  made  out.  Very  much 
remains  to  be  done,  but  thus  far  the  results  of  careful  experi- 
ments show  that  alcohol,  so  taken,  is  oxidized  within  the  body, 
and  so  supplies  energy  like  common  articles  of  food,  and  that  it 
is  physiologically  incorrect  to  designate  it  as  a  poison,  that  is,  a 
substance  which  can  only  do  harm  and  never  do  good  to  the  body. 
Briefly,  none  of  the  exact  results  hitherto  gained  can  be  appealed 
to  as  contradicting,  from  a  purely  physiological  point  of  view, 
the  conclusions  zv'hich  some  persons  have  drawn  from  their  daily 
common  experience,  that  alcohol,  so  used,  may  be  beneficial  to 
their  health." 

While  the  last  clause  does  not  mean  that  the  usefulness  of 
alcohol  in  daily  small  doses  has  been  scientifically  demonstrated, 
it  does  mean  that  at  present  there  is  nothing  in  physiological 
science  to  show  that  a  moderate  daily  use  of  alcohol  in  any  kind 
of  beverage  may  not  be  beneficial  to  health.  It  is  worth  while  to 
note  the  names  of  the  signers  of  this  statement,  since  the  weight 
of  their  combined  authority  should  have  long  ago  silenced  the 
claims  of  those  who  do  not  consider  any  daily  quantity  of  alcohol 
physiologically  permissible : 


58  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

S.  von  Basch,  Director  Lab.  of  Experimental  Pathology,  Vienna ; 

J.  Bernstein,  Prof.   Physiol.,  Halle; 

R.  Boehm,   Prof.   Pharmacology,  Leipzig; 

Arthur  Biedl,  Priv.  Doc.  Exp.  Path.,  Vienna ; 

T.  Lauder-Brunton,  Lect.  Pharmacology,  St.  Earth's  Hospital,  London ; 

P.  J.  Dear,  M.  A.,  Oxford ; 

Delzenne,   Prof.  Agrege  Physiol.,   Montpelier ; 

M.  Dufour,   Prof.  Agrege  Physique,  Nancy; 

Eugene  Dupuy,   Paris ; 

C.  Eckhard,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Giessen ; 
S.  Exner,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Vienna; 

Ph.  W.  Engelmann,   Prof.   Physiol.,  Berlin; 

N.  Floresco,  Preparateur  Physiol.,  Paris; 

M.  Foster,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Cambridge,  England; 

M.  von  Frey,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Ziirich ; 

J.  Gad,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Prague; 

Arthur  Gamgee,  Emer.  Prof.  Physiol.,  Owen's  Coll.,  Manchester; 

W.  H.  Gaskell,  Lect.  Physiol.,  Cambridge,  England; 

Fr.  Goltz,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Strassburg; 

P.  Griitzner,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Tubingen; 

W.  D.  Halliburton,  Prof.  Physiol.,  King's  College,  London; 

W.  J.  Hamburger,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Ecole  de  Med.  Vet.,  Utrecht; 

V.  Hensen,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Kiel; 

Geo.  T.  Kemp,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Univ.  of  Illinois; 

J.  von  Kries,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Freiburg; 

H.   Kronecker,   Prof.   Physiol.,  Bern ; 

M.  Lambert,  Prof.  Agrege  Physiol.,  Nancy; 

J.  N.  Langley,  Lect.  Histology,  Cambridge,  England; 

L.  Landois,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Greifswald ; 

J.  Latschenberger,  Vienna ; 

J.  P.  Langlais,  Prof.  Agrege  Physiol.,  Paris; 

F.  Laulanie,  Directeur  Ecole  Vet.,  Toulouse; 

Frederick  S.  Lee,  Prof.  Physiol.,  New  York; 

A.  B.  Macallum,  Lect.  Physiol.,  Toronto; 

Hans  Meyer,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Marburg; 

N.  Mislawski,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Kasan,  Russia; 

K.  Mitsukuri,  Prof.  Zoology,  Tokyo,  Japan; 

A.  Mosso,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Turin; 

A.  Moussu,  Prof.  Pathol.,  Ecole  Vet.,  Alfort; 

H.  Munk,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Berlin; 

Otto  Nasse,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Chem.  and  Pharmacology,  Rostock; 

H.  Ohrwall,   Prof.   Physiol.,  Upsala,   Sweden; 

D.  Noel  Paton,  Lect.  Physiol.;  Edinburgh,  Scotland ; 

William  T.  Porter,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Harvard  Medical  School,  Boston; 
J.  M.  Purser,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Trinity  College,  Dublin; 


INTERNATIONAL  PHYSIOLOGICAL  CONGRESS  39 

E.  Waymouth  Reid,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Dundee; 

Sydney  Ringer,  Prof.  Clin.  Med.  Univ.  Coll.,  London; 
A.  Rollett,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Graz; 
Giorgio  Rotondi,  Assist.  Physiol.,  Genoa; 
H.  Sahli,  Prof.  Therap.,  Bern; 

F.  M.  Sandwith,  Prof.  Medicine,  Cairo; 

E.  A.  Schafer,  Prof.  Physiol.  Univ.  Coll.,  London; 

C.   S.  Sherrington,  Prof.  Physiol.  Univ.  Coll.,  Liverpool; 

L.  E.  Shore,  Lect.  Physiol.,  Cambridge,  England ; 

J.  Burden  Sanderson,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Oxford; 

P.  H.  Pye-Smith,  Lect.  Guy's  Hospital  Medical  School,  London; 

W.  H.  Thompson,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Belfast; 

Max  Verworn,  Prof.  Physiol.,  Jena; 

A.  D.  Waller,  Lect.  Physiol.,  St.  Mary's  Hosp'l  Med.  School,  London; 

G.  Weiss,  Prof.  Agrege  Physique,  Paris; 

W.  H.  Wilson,  Prof  School  of  Medicine,  Cairo; 

N.  Zuntz,  Prof.  Physiol.  Landwirtschaftliche  Hochschule,  Berlin. 


XIV. 
GAUGE  OF  MODERATION 

IT  IS  thus  established  by  practically  a  consensus  of  physiolo- 
gists that  a  strictly  moderate  daily  use  of  alcoholic  liquors  may 
may  not  be  injurious,  but  beneficial  to  health.  There  is  however  no 
mathematical  gauge  to  determine  what  constitutes  a  strictly 
moderate  quantity.  Dr.  W.  O.  Atwater,  Professor  of  Chemistry, 
Wesleyan  University,  Middletown,  Conn.,  in  his  exhaustive  treat- 
ise on  "The  Nutritive  Value  of  Alcohol,"  says:  "Roughly 
speaking,  a  moderate  quantity  in  a  given  case  might  be  the 
amount  which  could  be  taken  without  any  manifest  effect  upon 
the  nervous  system.  Just  what  quantities  are  moderate  will 
depend  upon  the  individual,  the  kind  of  alcoholic  liquor,  and  the 
time  and  way  it  is  taken.  Thus,  persons  accustomed  to  alcoholic 
beverages  can  tolerate  more  than  those  who  are  not.  When 
the  alcohol  is  diluted,  as  in  wine  and  beer,  it  is  less  intoxicating 
than  when  it  is  taken  in  more  concentrated  form,  as  brandy  or 
whisky  with  only  a  little  water.  So,  likewise,  more  is  tolerated 
with  a  meal  than  on  an  empty  stomach.  The  only  test  of  what 
may  be  considered  a  moderate  quantity,  then,  in  this  sense,  is 
actual  experience!' 

But  even  the  more  concentrated  alcoholic  liquors,  such  as 
whisky  and  brandy,  may  be  taken  without  injury  in  strict  modera- 
tion, when  properly  diluted.  Apropos  of  this  phase  of  the  sub- 
ject, Dr.  John  J.  Abel,  of  Johns  Hopkins  University,  says :  "If 
whisky  or  cognac  were  always  to  be  diluted  with  water  until 
the  percentage  of  alcohol  was  brought  down  to  ten  per  cent,  they 
would  be  no  more  toxic  than  wine  of  the  same  strength."  Eng- 
lish physicians  generally,  accepting  the  formula  of  Anstie,  have 
made  a  "moderate  quantity"  the  equivalent  of  one  and  one-half 
(1^)  ounces  of  absolute  alcohol  per  day,  or  about  three  (3) 
ounces  of  whisky,  or  half  a  bottle  of  claret  or  Rhine  wine,  or 
four  (4)  glasses  of  beer,  this  amount  to  be  taken  only  at  lunch 
and  dinner,  and  the  whisky  to  be  well  diluted.  In  this  connection 


GAUGE  OF  MODERATION  41 

it  may  be  remarked  that  in  most  American  cafes  and  drinking 
resorts  a  hot  or  cold  luncheon  is  served  with  all  the  beverages. 

Dr.  William  H.  Welch,  Professor  of  Pathology,  Johns  Hop- 
kins University,  says:  "A  difficulty  at  the  beginning  is  encoun- 
tered in  attempting  to  define  moderation  in  drinking.  What  is 
moderate  for  one  person  may  be  immoderate  for  another." 


XV. 
PHYSIOLOGICAL  EXPERIMENTS 

PHYSIOLOGICAL  experiments,  including  those  of  most 
recent  date,  whether  made  with  animals  to  determine  analo- 
gous results  in  man,  or  with  human  subjects,  confirm  the  com- 
mon experience  that  in  strictly  moderate  doses  alcohol  is  not  only 
harmless,  but  in  some  cases  may  be  beneficial  to  health.  Dr.  C.  F. 
Hodge,  Professor  of  Physiology,  Clark  University,  whose  famil- 
iar experiments  with  kittens  and  dogs  determined  the  influence 
of  alcohol  on  growth  and  development,  gave  these  animals  only 
as  large  doses  as  he  could  venture  to  give  without  producing 
noticeable  intoxication,  so  that  any  analogy  in  the  results  can 
not  be  applied  to  the  strictly  moderate  drinker.  Hence,  when 
some  prohibition  writers,  with  their  usual  trend  to  exaggeration 
and  partiality,  claimed  these  experiments  showed  that  "alcohol 
always  lowers  working  power,  and  in  some  degree  interferes 
with  growth,"  Dr.  Hodge  felt  himself  compelled  in  his  treatise 
on  "Physiological  Instruction"  to  contradict  them,  and  make  it 
emphatic  that  "he  had  certainly  not  drawn  any  such  sweeping 
conclusion  from  his  own  experiments."  Dr.  A.  C.  Abbott,  of 
the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  conducted  his  experiments  on 
rabbits  with  a  view  to  determining  the  influence  of  acute  alcohol- 
ism on  their  normal  vital  resistance  to  infectious  disease;  but 
as  only  intoxicating  doses  were  used,  analogous  results  in  man 
by  way  of  lowering  his  resisting  power  do  not  apply  in  any  sense 
to  the  strictly  moderate  drinker.  The  same  physiologist  made 
experiments  with  monkeys,  which,  after  having  been  given  almost 
daily  excessive  doses  of  alcohol  for  two  consecutive  years,  were 
inoculated  with  the  bacilli  of  tuberculosis  without  falling  a  prey 
to  that  disease,  or  suffering  any  perceptible  impairment  of  their 
health.  Since  during  all  that  time  these  simians  hardly  ever 
drew  a  sober  breath,  they  made  a  most  remarkable  showing  of 
their  power  of  resistance,  but  their  immunity  does  not  at  all  bear 
upon  the  subject  of  moderate  drinking. 


PHYSIOLOGICAL  EXPERIMENTS  43 

In  fact,  it  would  be  an  erroneous  process  in  any  of  these 
experiments  to  apply  their  results  by  analogy  in  an  equal  degree 
to  'man.  Whatever  similarity  there  may  be  in  the  organs  and 
their  construction,  there  is  often  a  decided  difference  between 
the  man  and  the  lower  animal  in  their  respective  powers  of 
resistance  to  the  influence  of  alcohol.  It  was  a  recognition  of 
this  modifying  influence  that  Drs.  John  S.  Billings,  W.  O.  At- 
water,  H.  P.  Bowditch,  R.  H.  Chittenden  and  W.  H.  Welch 
reported  the  following  conclusion  to  the .  Committee  of  Fifty: 
''The  effects  of  a  moderate  or  occasional  use  of  alcoholic  drinks 
upon  man  differ  greatly  in  different  individuals,  and  depend  on 
constitutional  peculiarities,  age,  occupation,  climate,  etc.  Most 
of  them,  especially  the  ultimate  effects  upon  health,  can  not  be 
ascertained  with  much  accuracy  by  experiments  upon  animals 
or  upon  a  few  men  for  short  periods  of  time." 

Prof.  W.  O.  Atwater,  of  Wesleyan  University,  Conn.,  per- 
formed his  experiments  (known  as  the  Middletown  experiments) 
with  the  most  modern  tests  for  several  days,  his  subjects  being 
three  healthy  men,  two  of  whom  had  been  abstainers,  and  the 
other  a  moderate  drinker.  Each  one  was  given  daily,  in  six 
separate  doses,  as  much  alcohol  as  is  contained  in  a  bottle  of 
claret  or  Rhine  wine,  six  ounces  of  whisky,  or  five  ounces  of 
brandy.  In  summing  up  the  results  of  these  experiments,  Dr. 
Atwater  says:  "Alcohol  in  moderate  quantities  serves  to  a 
limited  extent  as  food.  If  we  consider  in  the  list  of  foods  all 
substances  which  may  serve  the  body  for  nutriment,  and  which 
may  be  thus  utilized  in  considerable  quantities  without  sensible 
disturbances  of  normal  bodily  functions,  alcohol  must?  be  includ- 
ed." These  experiments  were  undertaken  for  the  purpose  of  as- 
certaining the  "nutritive  value  of  alcohol,"  and  none  of  the  men 
suffered  any  undesirable  effects  from  a  continued  use  of  the 
alcohol  whatever. 


XVI. 

PROFITABLE  USES 

THE  harmless  and  often  profitable  use  of  alcoholic  liquors 
in  strict  moderation  is  a  matter  of  daily  experience.  Many 
physicians  recommend  a  glass  of  beer  or  a  glass  of  good  wine  as 
a  pleasant  table  drink'  to  aid  digestion.  The  stronger  beverages, 
thoroughly  diluted,  may  serve  a  similar  purpose  for  food  digested 
with  difficulty,  if  they  are  taken  in  small  doses  before  the  prin- 
cipal meal  of  the  day.  Wine  or  beer  is  prescribed  for  patients 
in  conditions  of  debility  or  convalescence,  because  each  acts  as 
an  excellent  tonic.  The  Rhine,  Moselle,  many  of  the  American, 
and  the  Hungarian  Tokay  wines  are  used  with  beneficial  results 
in  wasting  diseases.  Pure  beer  is  nutritious,  and  its  strictly 
moderate  use  may  be  of  value  to  dyspeptics,  who  can  not  easily 
assimilate  ordinary  food.  By  analysis,  one  quart  of  beer  con- 
tains from  46  to  124  grains  of  albumen,  nutritious  salts,  includ- 
ing the  phosphates,  and  a  large  proportion  of  extract  of  malt. 
The  latter  is  considered  a  powerful  aid  to  the  digestion  of  starchy 
foods,  and  a  promoter  of  muscle.  Ale,  porter  and  stout  belong 
in  the  category  of  malt  liquors,  and  share  in  their  advantages 
with  this  difference :  that,  being  more  alcoholic,  they  should  be 
taken  in  smaller  quantities.  Dublin  stout,  in  medicinal  doses, 
has  long  been  regarded  as  one  of  the  best  of  tonics.  The  diet 
prescribed  for  English  students  while  training  for  boat  races 
commonly  includes  small  quantities  of  beer  or  wine.  Sandow, 
"the  strong  man,"  who  performed  such  astounding  feats  of 
muscular  strength,  was  in  the  habit  of  taking  beer  daily.  In 
wine-drinking  countries,  such  as  France  and  Italy,  especially  in 
the  vineyard  districts,  where  ordinary  wine  is  the  beverage  of 
the  common  people,  used  at  almost  every  meal  of  the  day,  good 
health  and  longevity  are  the  rule,  and  there  is  very  little  drunken- 
ness, as  statistics  prove.  It  is  alcoholic  wine,  too,  and  not  must, 
that  the  peasants  drink  all  the  year  round.  The  percentage  of 
alcohol  is  inconsiderable,  and  wine  is  often  drunk  out  of  bowls, 
the  same  as  milk. 


PROFITABLE  USES  45 

Much  capital  has  been  made  by  prohibitionists  out  of  a  sen- 
tence of  Baron  Liebig's,  found  in  a  rare  edition  of  his  "Chemical 
Letters,"  published  in  1852,  in  which  he  says :  "We  can  prove 
that  as  much  flour  as  can  lie  on  the  point  of  a  table  knife  is  more 
nutritious  than  five  measures  of  the  best  Bavarian  beer."  Phys- 
iologists interpret  Liebig's  meaning  of  "more  nutritious"  to  be : 
"contains  more  nitrogenous  nutriment  than  five  measures  or  eight 
quarts  of  beer."  Nevertheless  R.  O.  Neumann,  scientist,  main- 
tains that  in  this  estimate  of  the  nutritive  value  of  beer,  Liebig  has 
committed  an  error  of  over  eight  thousand  per  cent. 

The  fact  is  that  we  can  not  get  away  from  the  presence  of 
alcohol,  for  it  has  been  physiologically  demonstrated  that  certain 
foods  and  breadstuff's  contain  it  in  small  percentage,  and  it  is 
also  found  in  the  human  body. 


XVII. 

THE  WAGE-EARNER 

NO  ONE  figures  so  prominently  in  the  drink  problem  as 
the  wage-earner.  In  a  spirit  of  altruism  the  prohibition- 
ist would  deprive  him  of  the  possibility  of  procuring  alcoholic 
drink,  because  so  many  thousands  of  his  class  suffer  from  the 
effects  of  its  abuse.  The  motive  is  good,  but  the  method  is  un- 
fair, and  there  is  no  beneficial  result.  In  "dry"  territory  many  a 
wage-earner  procures  his  liquor  nevertheless,  either  in  express 
packages  from  some  other  State,  or  else  contents  himself  with 
the  vilest  stuff  through  illegitimate  channels.  And  there  is  a  very 
important  side  to  this  question  which  the  prohibitionist  overlooks. 
There  are  many  millions  of  wage-earners  who  are  strictly  moder- 
ate drinkers.  With  their  daily  hard  labor  the  drinking  of  a  glass 
of  beer,  or  wine,  or  diluted  whisky  is  not  only  harmless,  but, 
according  to  physiological  testimony,  may  be  beneficial  to  their 
health.  Must  they  be  deprived  of  a  natural  right  because  the 
prohibitionist  believes  that  the  drinking  of  alcoholic  liquor,  even 
in  the  most  moderate  quantity,  is  a  malum  per  se? 

Coming  down  to  facts,  there  is  no  hygienic  reason  why  the 
hodcarrier  or  bricklayer,  after  his  day's  toil  in  the  broiling  heat, 
should  not  drink  a  glass  of  beer  with  his  meat  and  vegetables  — 
say,  at  his  home  dinner.  The  pale-faced,  emaciated  woman, 
whose  work  is  in  the  steaming  atmosphere  of  a  modern  laundry, 
may  find  herself  benefited  by  some  light,  alcoholic  beverage  before 
she  retires  for  the  night.  The  smelter,  who,  bared  to  the  waist, 
is  bathed  in  perspiration  before  the  liquid  fire  of  the  furnace, 
may  well  seek  a  restorative  in  a  glass  of  grog,  after  the  exhaust- 
ing day's  work  is  over.  The  miner  who  for  many  consecutive 
hours  is  shut  up  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth  may  not  reasonably 
be  deprived  of  a  moderate  use  of  alcoholic  liquor,  after  he 
emerges  into  the  open  air  in  a  condition  of  utter  fatigue.  Farm- 
hands, after  the  long  hours  of  the  day  in  harvesting  season,  may 
be  allowed  a  strictly  moderate  quantity  of  alcohol  in  some  form 
or  other  with  benefit  to  themselves. 


THE  WAGE-EARNER  47 

No  one  will  question  the  sincerity  of  the  late  Mr.  Gladstone 
in  the  cause  of  temperance  when  in  1864  he  wrote :  "How  can  I, 
who  drink  good  wine  and  bitter  beer  all  my  life  in  a  comfortable 
room  and  among  friends,  coolly  stand  up  and  advise  hard-working 
fellow  creatures  to  take  the  pledge?" 

It  is  a  fact  that  common  laborers,  who  do  hard  work  and 
are  accustomed  to  coarse  diet,  are  benefited  by  an  occasional  or 
moderate  use  of  distilled  spirits.  The  physiologist  Dr.  Koenig 
says  on  this  subject:  "Alcohol  in  moderate  doses  is  an  import- 
ant stimulant  to  digestion,  and  this  explains  the  strong  craving 
for  brandy  on  the  part  of  the  laboring  class,  whose  food  con- 
sists of  difficultly  digested  materials." 

That  such  a  benefit  should  be  reaped  becomes  all  the  more 
reasonable  when  it  is  considered  that  alcohol,  to  a  certain  extent, 
is  a  food.  So  believe  a  majority  of  physiologists.  A  remarkable 
instance  of  the  food  value  of  alcohol  was  reported  some  years 
ago  by  Dr.  S.  L.  Abbott,  of  the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital. 
It  was  the  case  of  a  young  woman  suffering  from  double  pneu- 
monia, who  refused  all  food,  and  was  apparently  at  the  point  of 
death.  A  teaspoon ful  of  brandy  and  water,  forced  between  her 
teeth,  seemed  to  benefit  her,  and  the  physicians  ordered  her  to  be 
given  all  the  brandy  she  could  take.  For  seven  days  she  lived 
exclusively  on  brandy  and  whisky,  consuming  altogether  over  a 
gallon  of  distilled  liquor  without  the  least  sign  of  overstimulation 
or  unpleasant  effects,  and  she  made  a  good  recovery.  Since  she 
took  no  other  food  during  all  this  time,  the  conclusion  is  irresist- 
ible that  she  was  nourished  by  the  alcohol.1 


1  —  Physiological  Aspects  of  the  Liquor  Problem,  I,  p.  49. 


XVIII. 
WORKING  EFFICIENCY 

A  VERY  important  matter  in  connection  with  the  moder- 
ate use  of  alcohol  by  the  laboring  classds  is  the  question 
of  whether  it  does  not  interfere  with  their  working  efficiency. 
Interests  of  both  the  employer  and  employe  are  vitally  involved. 
The  answer  is  that  from  the  latest  experiments  of  physiologists 
it  does  not  appear  that  strictly  moderate  drinking  impairs  work- 
ing efficiency,  provided  it  is  done  after  the  hours  of  labor,  pref- 
erably in  connection  with  the  principal  meal  of  the  day.  Dr. 
John  J.  Abel,  of  Johns  Hopkins  University,  whose  authority  on 
the  subject  will  not  be  disputed,  summarizes  this  phase  of  the 
subject  as  follows :  "That  part  of  the  race  which  has  work  to 
do  will,  perhaps,  some  day  accept  the  principle  of  the  very  moder- 
ate use  of  alcohol  at  the  proper  time  and  place,  as  the  only  prin- 
ciple compatible  with  its  non-harmfulness,  or  with  possible  bene- 
fits to  be  derived  from  it."  One  of  those  who  endorsed  this 
opinion  of  Dr.  Abel's  was  President  (Emeritus)  Chas.  W.  Eliot, 
of  Harvard  University,  prominent  as  a  member  of  the  Committee 
of  Fifty.  Still,  Mr.  Eliot,  in  a  late  speech  before  the  No-License 
League  of  Massachusetts,  is  reported  to  have  said:  "Recent 
researches  in  physiology  and  medicine  tend  strongly  to  show 
that  even  the  moderate  drinking  of  alcohol  is  inexpedient."  In 
the  examples  which  he  cites  to  prove  his  statement,  there  is  not 
one  that  contradicts  Dr.  Abel's  conclusion  that  working  efficiency 
is  not  impaired  by  "the  very  moderate  use  of  alcohol  at  the 
proper  time  and  place."  The  sailor  is  not  likely  to  derive  benefit 
from  grog  or  rum  while  actively  engaged  in  the  rough  duties 
of  his  voyage,  but  a  very  moderate  allowance  of  alcohol  will  be 
an  excellent  and  harmless  sedative  for  him  as  often  as  he  retires 
to  rest.  Dr.  Blessing,  who  accompanied  Nansen's  polar  expedi- 
tion, calls  attention  to  this  fact.  The  captain  of  an  ocean  liner 
owes,  perhaps,  nothing  to  alcohol  in  weathering  the  storms  and 
exposures  of  the  bridge,  but  after  the  strain  is  over,  and  before 
seeking  repose,  he  may  welcome  a  "nightcap"  as  soothing  and 


WORKING  EFFICIENCY  49 

helpful.  The  man  of  intellectual  pursuits  will  find  alcohol  a 
drag  on  his  mental  activities  while  his  application  lasts,  but 
when  the  time  of  relaxation  arrives  he  may  safely  and  bene- 
ficially resort  to  a  moderate  indulgence.  Prize  fighters  do  not 
train  with  the  aid  of  stimulants,  but  after  the  day's  routine  is 
finished,  a  very  moderate  allowance  of  alcohol  is  frequently 
permissable. 

'Time  reaction"  is  not  disturbed  by  small  doses  of  alcohol, 
unless  they  be  taken  a  short  time  or  immediately  before  the  work 
in  hand.  All  this  goes  to  show  that  with  restrictions  of  time  and 
place  there  is,  as  Dr.  Abel  puts  it,  a  moderate  daily  quantity  of 
alcohol,  which  is  "physiologically  permissible." 

President  Eliot  is  himself  in  evidence  on  this  subject.  At 
the  meeting  of  the  Massachusetts  No-License  League,  already 
referred  to,  he  said:  "I  have  been  all  my  life  what  is  called  a 
moderate  drinker  —  that  is  to  say,  I  have  used  beer  and  wine 
on  occasion,  though  never  habitually  —  and  I  have  never  experi- 
enced any  ill  effects  whatever  in  my  own  person  from  either  beer 
or  wine." 

And  since  the  meeting  of  the  Massachusetts  No-License 
League  Dr.  Eliot  found  occasion  to  reiterate  in  a  practical  way 
his  belief  in  the  non-harmfulness  of  an  occasional  use  of  alcoholic 
liquors.  This  was  on  the  evening  of  May  11,  1909,  in  Boston, 
when  he  was  decorated  with  the  Imperial  Order  of  the  Rising 
Sun  by  the  Baron  Takahira,  and  drank  a  glass  of  rare  old  wine 
to  the  health  of  the  Mikado.  He  can  not,  therefore,  be  con- 
sidered a  convert  to  teetotalism  or  prohibition,  as  some  religious 
conventions  have  since  proclaimed  him. 

The  physiologist  O.  Funke  sums  up  the  psychology  of  the 
situation  as  follows : 

"One  needs  only  to  ask :  must  our  machine,  then,  always 
work  in  the  same  monotonous,  tiresome  tempo  as  the  pendulum 
of  a  clock?  What  harm  is  there  if  from  time  to  time  it  pumps 
somewhat  more  quickly  under  a  higher  pressure  of  steam,  if  sub- 
sequently, during  a  period  of  slower  work,  it  can  make  good  this 
slight,  unnecessary  expenditure  of  force  by  drafts  from  an  abun- 
dant store  of  energy,  and  repair  any  small  damage  which  its 
mechanism  may  have  suffered?" 


50  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

Men  of  the  highest  accomplishments  and  genius  have  work- 
ed that  way  —  and  not  within  the  straight- jacket  lines  of  com- 
pulsory abstinence. 

In  discussing  the  possible  effects  on  working  efficiency  of 
even  the  most  moderate  daily  use  of  alcoholic  liquors,  it  is 
worthy  of  notice  that  this  efficiency  is  likely  to  be  much  sooner 
impaired  by  habits  of  eating.  Sluggish  minds  and  slow  bodies 
are  frequently  produced  by  an  improper  diet,  though  it  be  moder- 
ate; and  dyspepsia,  with  its  train  of  concomitant  ills,  is  hardly 
conducive  to  supplying  the  best  physical  or  mental  energies. 
It  may  be  suggested,  therefore,  as  eminently  proper  in  these 
days  of  accomplishing  all  reforms  by  means  of  legislation,  that 
both  the  eating  and  drinking  habits  of  Americans  be  regulated 
by  law,  with  the  view  of  producing  a  perfect  twentieth-century 
man,  physically  as  well  as  mentally. 


XIX. 
AN  ESTIMATED  NUMBER 

IT  IS  absolutely  impracticable  and  useless  to  attempt  a  solu- 
tion of  the  liquor  problem  without  reckoning  with  the  moder- 
ate drinker.     His  rights  are  unimpeachable,  and  in  numbers  he 
is  overwhelmingly  in  the  majority. 

While  there  are  no  definitely  trustworthy  data,  giving  the 
proportion  of  total  abstainers  to  occasional  drinkers,  regular 
moderate  drinkers,  and  positively  intemperate  persons  in  the 
United  States,  it  is  generally  believed  that  not  more  than  twenty 
per  cent  of  the  adult  male  population  are  total  abstainers ;  not 
more  than  five  per  cent  are  to  be  classed  among  the  intemperate, 
and  those  who  are  either  occasionally  or  habitually  drunk;  and 
of  the  remaining  seventy-five  per  cent  at  least  fifty  per  cent  of 
the  whole  are  occasional  drinkers  only,  and  the  remaining  twenty- 
five  per  cent  are  regular,  moderate  drinkers.1  Estimating  the 
present  population  at  90,000,000,  this  ratio  would  easily  indicate 
a  total  of  20,000,000  moderate  and  occasional  drinkers. 


1 — Physiological  Aspects  of  the  Liquor  Problem,  Vol.  I,  John  S.  Billings. 


XX. 

THE  BIBLE  VIEW  OF  INTEMPERANCE 

HAVING  established  the  rights  of  the  moderate  drinker,  we 
now  come  to  the  subject  of  the  drunkard,  or  the  abuse 
of  alcohol.  Beginning  with  Scripture,  we  find  that  the  drunkard 
is  most  scathingly  denounced  in  its  pages.  The  direst  penalties 
of  body  and  soul  are  thundered  against  him;  he  is  threatened 
with  poverty  and  degradation  in  this  life,  and  eternal  damnation 
in  the  next.  A  vivid  description  of  disasters,  overtaking  the  in- 
ebriate and  sot  is  found  in  the  familiar  passage  from  Proverbs, 
chapter  23:  "Who  hath  woe?  Whose  father  hath  woe?  Who 
hath  contentions  ?  Who  falls  into  pits  ?  Who  hath  wounds  with- 
out cause?  Who  hath  redness  of  eyes?  Surely  they  that  pass 
their  time  in  wine,  and  study  to  drink  off  their  cups."  Prov.  23.1 
These  evils  befall  the  men  "who  pass  their  time  in  wine,"  and, 
seeking  mixed  drink,  get  stupidly  and  helplessly  drunk. 

But  the  drunkard  is  not  threatened  more  pointedly  than  the 
glutton.  They  are  paired  in  wickedness.  In  the  same  '23d  chap- 
ter of  Proverbs  we  read :  "Because  they  that  give  themselves  to 
drinking,  and  that  club  together  shall  be  consumed."  Prov. 
23  :21*  St.  Paul,  in  Philippians,  chapter  3  :18-19,  says :  "They 
are  enemies  of  the  cross  of  Christ;  whose  end  is  destruction; 
whose  'God  is  their  belly."  Phil.  3  :18-19.3  Gluttons  as  well  as 
drunkards  make  gods  of  their  belly,  they  are  both  enemies  of  the 
cross  of  Christ,  and  both  will  perish.  In  his  epistle  to  the  Ro- 
mans, chapter  16  :18,  St.  Paul  tells  us :  "For  they  that  are  such, 
serve  not  Christ  our  Lord,  but  their  own  belly."  Rom.  16:18.4 

Protestant  versions : 

1—  "Who  hath  woe?  Who  hath  sorrow?  Who  hath  contentions?  Who 
hath  babbling?  Who  hath  wounds  without  cause?  Who  hath  red- 
ness of  eyes?  They  that  tarry  long  at  the  wine,  they  that  go  to 
seek  the  mixed  wine." 

2— "For  the  drunkard  and  the  glutton  shall  come  to  poverty." 

3  — "The  enemies  of  the  cross  of  Christ ;  whose  end  is  destruction,  whose 
God  is  their  belly." 

4 — "For  they,  that  are  such,  serve  not  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  but  their 
own  belly." 


THE  BIBLE  VIEW  OF  INTEMPERANCE  53 

Again  the  belly-servers  —  drunkards  and  gluttons  —  are  excluded 
from  the  service  of  Christ.  Both  are  accounted  equally  guilty 
before  God,  and  required  to  pay  the  penalty  of  their  transgressions. 

Drunkenness  and  gluttony  are  both  abuses  —  one  of  drink, 
the  other  of  food.  It  is  not,  therefore,  the  use  but  abuse  of 
alcoholic  drink,  or  food,  that  is  the  subject  of  scriptural  condem- 
nation. The  glutton  impairs  his  mental  faculties  as  well  as  his 
health,  just  as  the  drunkard  does,  though  it  be  in  a  less  degree. 
There  are  many  physicians  and  hygienists  who  believe  that  a 
one-sided  and  excessive  diet  does  more  harm  to  the  health  of  a 
community  as  a  whole  than  the  misuse  of  alcohol,  and  that,  in 
this  respect,  the  "eating  habit"  is  worse  than  the  "drinking 
habit."  (See  "Nutritive  Value  of  Alcohol,"  by  W.  O,  Atwater.) 


XXI. 

PROHIBITION  AS  A  REMEDY 

IT  IS  not  the  intention  of  the  writer  to  go  into  the  history  of 
drunkenness.  That  is  as  old  almost  as  the  history  of  man. 
Governments,  from  the  beginning,  have  busied  themselves  with 
measures  to  check  its  ravages.  To  this  end  they  enforced 
laws  of  restriction  and  regulation.  It  fell  to  the  lot  of  Maine  — 
one  of  the  United  States  —  to  be  the  birthplace  of  an  entirely 
new  provision,  a  coercive  one,  which  has  ever  since  been 
known  by  the  name  of  prohibition.  The  first  temperance  society 
in  that  State  was  organized  during  the  winter  of  1826-27,  but, 
although  its  motive  was  religious  and  its  members  were  active 
in  the  work  of  the  Christian  churches,  they  by  no  means  in  the 
beginning  advocated  prohibition.  In  an  address  before  the 
Washington  Temperance  Society  in  1841,  John  T.  Walton  said: 
"Washingtonians  are  firm  believers  in  the  efficacy  and  power  of 
moral  suasion ;  this  they  believe  to  be  the  main  lever ;  they  hold 
that  doctrine  to  be  unsound  which  includes  the  principle  of  coer- 
cion, and,  therefore,  they  can  not  go  hand  in  hand  with  those 
who  cry  out:  'Give  us  the  strong  arm  of  the  law.'"  If  pro- 
hibitionists later  had  followed  in  the  footsteps  of  these  pioneers 
of  temperance  they  would  have  accomplished  a  great  deal  more 
for  its  progress,  and  avoided  those  travesties  and  degradations 
of  the  law  which  have  followed  everywhere  in  the  wake  of  their 
impotent  legislation. 

The  first  prohibitory  law  in  Maine  was  enacted  in  1846,  but 
it  did  not  affect  the  manufacture  of  malt,  vinous  or  spirituous 
liquors.  In  1851,  however,  a  Democratic  legislature  passed  what 
has  since  become  widely  known  as  the  Maine  Law,  whidi  pro- 
hibits both  the  manufacture  and  sale  of  intoxicants. 

Thus  it  appears  that  prohibition,  indigenous  to  American 
soil,  is  little  more  than  half  a  century  old.  It  was  taken  up  and 
fostered  mainly  by  members  of  the  Protestant  Evangelical 


PROHIBITION  AS  A  REMEDY  55 

churches,  but  they  were  by  no  means  unanimous  in  its  support. 
Even  those  who  believed  in  total  abstinence  as  a  moral  principle 
were  slow  in  endorsing  the  proposition  of  its  legal  enforcement. 
And  it  is  no  wonder  that  they  should  have  been  slow,  for  many 
still  had  retained  some  regard  for  Christian  liberty,  and  were 
loath  to  condemn  the  'moderate  drinker. 


XXII. 

METHODIST  AND  PRESBYTERIAN 
HISTORY 

NOT  a  few  among  the  Methodist  brethren  remember  the 
time  when  the  circuit  rider,  weary  and  travel-stained, 
alighting  from  the  saddle-bags  carried  by  his  nag,  was  bid  welcome 
and  entertained  by  a  "brother"  or  "sister"  in  a  snug  farmhouse  by 
the  roadside  with  a  delicious  draught  of  homemade  wine.  The 
wine  was  refreshing,  harmless  in  moderation,  and,  like  the  script- 
ural "fermented  grape  juice,"  it  made  "glad  the  heart  of  man." 
So  also  it  was  less  than  forty-five  years  ago  that  prominent  minis- 
ters of  the  old  Kirk  of  Scotland  (the  Presbyterian  Church) 
would  have  considered  it  downright  heresy  for  anyone  to  main- 
tain that  the  strictly  moderate  use  of  alcoholic  liquors  is  forbid- 
den by  the  Scriptures.  There  are  those  living  who  may  remem- 
ber that  ministers  of  the  Kirk,  while  in  the  pulpit,  were  in  the 
habit  of  taking  an  occasional  sip  of  grog  in  the  course  of  their 
sermon.  They  and  their  congregation  believed  in  temperance 
such  as  Christ  preached  and  most  probably  practiced.  The 
American  Issue,  the  official  organ  of  the  Anti-Saloon  League, 
admits  that  in  the  United  States  "there  were  very  few  places 
where  whisky  was  not  kept  in  that  day,  even  in  the  homes  of 
leading  ministers  and  church  officials."  But  this  conception  of 
temperance  found  little  favor  with  American  Presbyterians,  and 
today,  after  successive  evolutionary  stages,  they,  and  practically 
all  Evangelical  Protestant  churches,  have  reached  the  point  of 
being  committed  to  and  officially  endorsing  State-wide  prohibition. 


XXIII. 
PROHIBITION  WAVES 

IT  WAS  not  to  be  expected  that  so  radical  and  drastic  a  meas- 
ure as  prohibition  would  meet  at  once  with  a  large  degree  of 
public  favor  in  the  United  States.  Still,  the  experiment  in  the 
State  of  Maine  was  accompanied  with  such  apparently  good 
results  at  the  start  that  other  northern  States  were  prompted  to 
give  it  a  trial.  Accordingly,  fifty-five  years  ago,  a  prohibition 
wave  swept  over  the  following  States  and  left  them  on  the  "dry" 
beach  —  the  quicksands  of  compulsory  abstinence :  New  Hamp- 
shire, Vermont,  Rhode  Island,  Connecticut,  New  York,  Dela- 
ware, Michigan,  Indiana  and  Iowa.  Their  encouragement  of 
legal  coercion  did  not  continue  long;  for,  put  into  practice,  pro- 
hibition was  soon  recognized  as  a  dismal  failure.  Intemperance 
was  not  lessened  owing  to  the  substitution  of  an  illicit  traffic 
and  the  facility  of  procuring  liquors  by  common  carriers  from 
other  States ;  worse  evils,  such  as  drug  habits,  became  common, 
as  well  as  a  public  contempt  of  the  law.  The  falling  off  in  public 
revenue  was  coupled  with  an  increase  in  the  public  expenditures 
caused  by  a  new  category  of  excesses  and  crimes.  The  people 
revolted,  repudiated  prohibition,  and  in  many  States  adopted  the 
system  of  license.  At  present  only  three  of  eighteen  northern 
States,  which  at  some  time  tried  the  experiment,  are  remaining 
under  prohibition  rule  —  Maine,  Kansas  and  North  Dakota. 

A  second  gigantic  wave  swept  recently  over  the  southern 
States,  and  does  not  yet  appear  to  have  spent  its  force.  Its  per- 
sistency is  to  be  traced  to  two  principal  causes :  first,  the  insist- 
ence of  the  white  population  to  bring  the  vicious  and  brutal  type 
of  negro  under  severer  control ;  second,  their  determination  to 
eliminate  the  crime-breeding  dive,  that  usurps  the  name  of  saloon. 
Both  motives  deserve  the  highest  commendation,  the  only  ques- 
tion is  whether  the  coercive  'method  brings  about  any  reasonable 
proportion  of  the  desired  results. 

Prohibition  is  also  making  astonishing  progress  by  the 
achievements  of  local  option  in  every  State  of  the  Union.  The 


58  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

organization  back  of  it  is  the  Anti-Saloon  League,  which  seems 
to  be  supplied  with  an  abundance  of  pecuniary  and  political  re- 
sources. The  League's  object  is  avowedly  to  bring  about  pro- 
hibition in  individual  townships,  municipalities  and  counties,  and 
by  that  means  gradually  extend  its  dominion  over  the  entire 
State.  Its  leaders  are  principally  ministers  of  the  evangelical 
churches. 


XXIV. 
PROHIBITION  OR  LICENSE 

IN  EXPOUNDING  the  Christian  standing  of  the  strictly 
moderate  drinker,  we  have  already  shown  that  there  is  no 
scriptural  endorsement  of  compulsory  abstinence,  and  from  the 
physiological  point  of  view  demonstrated  that  temperance  and 
not  abstinence  is  essential  to  health.  It  remains  for  us  to  ex- 
amine into  the  claim  put  forward  by  the  advocates  of  prohibition, 
that  it  is  for  the  public  good  —  pro  bono  publico  —  because  it 
benefits  the  individual  family  and  State  by  reducing  the  mon- 
strous evils  caused  by  alcoholic  abuse.  In  other  words,  the 
question  to  determine  is  whether  it  is  a  more  efficacious  remedy 
against  the  evils  of  the  liquor  traffic  than  restriction  and  regula- 
tion, the  combination  of  which,  with  the  experience  of  centuries 
back  of  it,  finds  its  vindication  in  the  beneficial  results  of  high 
license. 

The  claim  for  prohibition,  that  it  diminishes  the  ratio  of 
public  drunkenness,  crime,  disease,  insanity,  defective  heredity, 
and  cuts  down  to  a  minimum  the  expenditures  these  entail  in 
taxes  upon  the  people,  wholly  lacks  foundation,  and  it  will  not 
be  difficult  to  show  by  statistics  that  wherever  prohibition  has 
been  established  these  public  burdens  are  rather  increased  than 
diminished.  A  little  sidelight  on  the  subject  will  not  be  amiss. 
Some  three  years  ago  the  Diet  of  Finland  sent  a  delegation 
of  three  of  its  members  —  Bjorn  Schauman,  H.  J.  Bostrom  and 
Allan  Zilliacus  —  to  the  United  States  on  a  tour  of  investigation, 
for  the  purpose  of  studying  our  restrictive  laws  concerning  the 
liquor  traffic  and  their  operation.  They  visited  the  prohibition 
and  license  States,  and  States  where  local  option  flourished. 
After  getting  through  with  them  all  the  chairman.  Baron  Schau- 
man said:  "We  have  seen  more  drunkenness  and  disregard  of 
law  in  Maine  than  anywhere  else."  Recently  the  Finnish  Diet 
passed  a  prohibitory  law  which  forbids  the  use  of  the  stronger 
alcoholic  liquors  in  favor  of  the  northern  beers.  This  is  certainly 
far  from  being  prohibition  in  the  sweeping  American  sense,  and 


60  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

yet  the  new  Finnish  law  was  never  enforced  and  is  not  now  in 
force.  The  writer  of  this  essay  received  a  letter  from  Baron 
Schauman,  the  mayor  of  Helsingfors,  dated  August  20,  1909,  in 
which  he  says,  apropos  of  this  subject:  "Our  Diet  has  certainly 
passed  a  prohibitory  law,  but  our  government  has  not  sanctioned 
it,  as  being  quite  impossible  to  put  into  practical  operation,  and 
least  of  all  from  a  state-financial  point  of  view.  Many  who 
voted  for  the  prohibitory  law  have  since  discovered  the  utter 
impossibility  of  its  being  carried  out,  and  are  beginning  to  think 
of  some  sort  of  local  option  law.  But  since  the  prohibitionists 
continue  to-  stand  by  total  prohibition  as  the  only  solution  of 
the  question,  it  will  most  likely  be  a  long  time  before  a  new  law 
can  be  put  into  operation.  At  present  we  still  have  the  old  law 
in  force,  such  as  it  was  when  I  visited  the  United  States  three 
years  ago." 

Let  us  now,  as  a  preliminary  step  in  the  investigation  of 
the  claims  of  prohibition,  examine  the  subject  of  illicit  traffic  in 
prohibition  States. 


XXV. 
THE  ILLICIT  TRAFFIC 

THE  illicit  traffic  begins  as  soon  as  steps  are  taken  to  enforce 
the  prohibitory  law,  and  it  grows  apace,  particularly  in  those 
communities  where  popular  sentiment  is  unfriendly  to  its  enforce- 
ment on  the  ground  of  its  interference  with  Christian  liberty  and 
the  natural  right  of  the  strictly  moderate  drinker.  'The  "boot- 
legger," "pocket-peddler,"  "blind  tiger,"  "speak-easy,"  "blind 
pig,"  and  contrivances  of  that  description,  selling  intoxicating 
drink  under  cover,  soon  spring  up  like  mushrooms,  and  do  a 
flourishing  business.  In  order  to  avoid  arrests,  officials  are  gen- 
erously bribed,  and  the  illicit  traffic  keeps  on  increasing.  War- 
rants to  search  for  liquor  and  seize  it  if  found  are  frequently 
sworn  out  at  the  will  of  the  police  and  deputy  sheriffs,  who  fail 
to  execute  the  law  in  order  to  protect  their  friends.  In  the  prose- 
cution of  offenders  oaths  are  flagrantly  violated.  It  is  well 
known  that  in  the  State  of  Maine  a  regular  system  of  blackmail 
was  encouraged,  and  a  scale  of  prices,  ranging  from  $200  a 
month  down,  according  to  the  amount  of  business,  fixed  for  the 
immunity  of  those  engaged  in  the  illicit  traffic.  The  vilest  con- 
coctions are  often  substituted  for  beer,  wine  and  whisky,  and 
these  produce  a  violent  and  dangerous  form  of  intoxication. 
Among  these  may  be  mentioned  "split,"  a  beverage  made  of  the 
cheapest  kind  of  alcohol  mixed  with  water  and  a  dash  of  rum; 
pinetop  and  tobacco  brew,  a  poisonous  preparation  used  by  ne- 
groes in  prohibition  territory  of  the  South ;  "silo,"  a  vegetable 
alcoholic  juice,  madly  intoxicating,  but  liberally  swallowed  in 
some  of  the  farming  regions  of  Kansas  and  Iowa,  wherever  pro- 
hibitory laws  hold  absolute  sway.  Besides  the  "protected"  bars 
in  prohibition  States,  including  so-called  eating-houses,  where 
liquors  are  sold  clandestinely,  there  are  "kitchen"  bars  and  hotel 
bars,  generously  patronized,  with  the  connivance  of  the  police. 
The  number  of  drug  stores  is  amazingly  multiplied,  so  are  their 
sales  of  alcoholic  liquors  on  prescriptions  that  are  easily  obtained 


\ 


62  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

from  so-called  physicians.  It  would  be  of  psychological  interest 
to  know  how  many  healthy  patients  seek  medical  attention,  and  re- 
quire the  tonic  of  a  liquid  food  from  apothecaries  in  prohibition 
towns !  Express  companies  do  a  rushing  business  with  orders  for 
bottled  goods  and  jugs.  Instead  of  being  delivered  at  a  saloon  or 
cafe  they  find  their  way  to  the  drug  store,  the  home  and  clubhouse. 
Home  drinking  and  private  tippling  are  encouraged,  and  many  a 
father,  who  formerly  took  an  occasional  drink  in  a  saloon,  now 
puts  the  bottle  on  the  table  in  presence  of  his  children. 


XXVI. 

THE  INTERSTATE  COMMERCE 
LAW 

BUT  prohibition,  by  the  very  nature  of  things,  not  only  en- 
courages an  enormous  illicit  traffic  —  it  also  is  powerless  in 
its  present  state  of  development  to  prevent  the  consumption  of 
alcoholic  liquors  sent  into  prohibition  territory  from  license 
States.  And  so  long  as  there  is  this  legitimate  way  of  procuring 
liquors  in  dry  territory,  it  seems  utterly  preposterous  to  set  up 
the  claim  that  within  its  bounds  their  consumption  should  be 
necessarily  decreased.  Under  the  present  provisions  of  the  Inter- 
state Commerce  Law  there  can  be  no  trouble  in  filling  the  buffets 
and  ice  boxes  of  fashionable  clubs  with  all  kinds  of  liquors,  nor 
need  the  individual  be  at  a  loss  to  procure  intoxicants  so  long  as 
these  can  be  shipped  to  his  address. 

The  only  one  seriously  inconvenienced  is  the  wage-earner, 
who  can  not  afford  the  expense  of  a  shipment,  and  he  may  be 
tempted  to  resort  to  the  hypocritical  alternative  of  a  drug  store 
prescription.  The  "boozer"  gets  himself  in  easy  touch  with  the 
"bootlegger"  or  "blind  tiger."  Many  a  young  man,  who,  under 
license,  took  an  occasional  drink  in  a  saloon  is  encouraged  under 
prohibition  rule  to  indulge  much  more  frequently  in  the  flowing 
bowl  amid  the  inviting  surroundings  of  a  private  clubhouse, 
where  he  can  be  unobserved  and  unmolested.  The  fact  is  that 
judging  from  warehouse  receipts,  home  and  club  consumption  of 
alcoholic  liquors  is  having  an  appalling  increase  in  southern  pro- 
hibition States,  nor  does  all  the  bottle  and  jug  trade  come  from 
the  rich.  Even  the  negro  finds  abundant  opportunity  to  satisfy 
his  appetite.  As  an  illustration  we  may  call  attention  to  the  fact 
that  in  many  of  the  smaller  country  towns  of  Georgia,  following 
the  arrival  of  trains,  the  stations  resemble  more  closely  a  "jug- 
house"  than  a  place  for  the  accommodation  of  passengers.  A 
great  deal  of  this  "jug"  whisky  goes  to  the  negroes,  and  it  is  a 
common  sight  to  see  a  parade  of  blacks,  each  one  wearing  a  broad 


64  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

grin  and  with  a  jug  of  whisky  under  his  arm,  leaving  the  railroad 
station.  The  spectacle  became  so  frequent  and  obnoxious  to  the 
better  class  of  citizens,  that  complaint  was  made  to  the  express 
companies,  and  the  latter  refused  to  accept  jugs  for  shipment 
"unless  packed  in  wood  or  corrugated  boxes,"  and  allowed  "not 
more  than  one  jug  to  be  packed  in  a  corrugated  box."  It  is  a 
fact  undisputed  in  commercial  circles  that  many  mail-order 
liquor  houses  have  amassed  fortunes  within  the  past  few  years 
out  of  prohibition  territory. 


XXVII. 

IOWA'S  EXPERIENCE 

PROHIBITION  at  this  stage  of  its  history  is  no  longer  an 
experiment ;  it  has  been  tried  during  the  past  half  century 
in  many  States,  and  it  should  not  be  difficult  by  means  of  an 
honest  investigation  to  determine  its  success  or  failure.  No- 
where did  it  have  a  fairer  test  and  under  more  favorable  con- 
ditions than  in  Iowa,  and  yet  nowhere  did  it  cause  such  signal 
disappointment  and  prove  so  disastrously  a  failure.  Iowa  is  an 
agricultural  State,  with  few  large  cities,  and  the  population  is 
mainly  Puritan  by  descent,  with  inherited  Puritan  habits  and 
traditions.  Public  sentiment  was  strongly  opposed  to  temper- 
ance, and  there  was  only  a  small  percentage  of  foreign  immi- 
grants. After  State-wide  prohibition  had  been  passed  into  a 
law  in  1886,  the  trade  of  the  saloon  was  transferred  to  the  drug 
store,  "which  immediately  began  to  do  a  thriving  trade  in  liquors, 
purchased  ostensibly  for  medicinal  use,  but  in  reality  to  be  con- 
sumed, if  not  in  the  shop,  at  least  at  home,  as  a  beverage,"  writes 
Dr.  Frederic  H.  Wines  in  his  report  to  the  subcommittee  of  the 
Committee  of  Fifty.  He  goes  on  to  say  that  many  ex-saloon- 
keepers opened  drug  stores  in  which  the  real  business  of  the  place 
was  carried  on  in  the  back  room.  They  hired  registered  and 
licensed  pharmacists  as  clerks,  or  took  them  into  partnership. 
Guests  at  hotels  could  order  wine  or  beer  for  the  table  on  a 
"pharmacy  blank."  Judge  Caldwell  in  one  of  his  decisions  in 
the  United  States  Circuit  Court,  October  31,  1890,  describes  the 
condition  as  follows :  "The  retail  liquor  traffic  was  practically 
re-established,  and  in  many  cases  by  the  most  irresponsible  and 
unsuitable  persons,  who  were  not  citizens  of  the  State  and  were 
indifferent  to  its  welfare.  Peaceful  and  quiet  communities,  from 
which  the  sale  of  liquor  had  been  banished  for  years,  were  sud- 
denly afflicted  with  all  the  evils  of  the  liquor  traffic.  The  seats 
of  learning  were  invaded  by  the  liquor-vender,  and  the  youth  of 
the  State  gathered  there  for  instruction  were  corrupted  and  de- 
moralized, and  disorder,  violence  and  crime  reigned  where  only 


66  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

peace  and  order  had  been  known  before.  The  invaded  com- 
munities were  powerless  to  protect  themselves.  They  could 
neither  regulate,  tax,  restrain  nor  prohibit  this  traffic. 

Continuing  his  descriptions  of  the  effects  of  prohibition  in 
Iowa,  Dr.  Wines  says  that  men  could  drink  in  a  drug  store  who 
would  not,  under  a  license  system,  have  drunk  at  a  public  bar. 
The  business  of  selling  drugs  became,  in  a  city  like  Des  Moines, 
more  profitable  than  banking.  Then,  too,  there  were  counties  in 
which  the  prohibitory  law  was  boldly  disregarded,  and,  where 
public  sentiment  sustained  it,  a  contraband  traffic  was  maintained 
in  cellars,  barns,  alleys  and  in  the  houses  on  the  outskirts  of  towns. 
Liquor-searchers  derived  a  handsome  income  from  blackmail. 
Some  justices  of  the  peace  earned  more  than  the  salaries  paid  to 
the  judges  of  the  Supreme  Court.  The  sanctity  of  private  life 
was  violated.  Witnesses  perjured  themselves  upon  the  stand. 
Juries  refused  to  render  a  verdict  of  guilty.  The  popular  re- 
spect for  law  rapidly  declined.  In  summing  up  the  entire  situa- 
tion, Dr.  Wines  reaches  the  conclusion  that  while  prohibition 
certainly  wiped  out  nearly  a  hundred  and  fifty  breweries,  closed 
a  large  distillery,  and  drove  out  of  business  nearly  or  quite  two 
thousand  saloons,  {ffar  more  liquor  is  still  sold  as  a  beverage  in 
the  drug  stores  than  in  the  saloons.  Many  of  them  sell  freely  by 
the  bottle,  but  allow  no  drinking  on  the  premises ;  others  permit 
trusted  friends  to  keep  their  private  bottles  behind  the  prescrip- 
tion case,  and  some  do  a  flourishing  and  profitable  business  in 
beer,  particularly  on  Sundays  and  after  ten  o'clock  at  night, 
which  is  drunk  by  the  purchasers  in  the  back  room.  The 
amount  thus  consumed  can  not  be  estimated,  nor  the  amount 
ordered  by  mail  from  abroad  for  home  consumption  and  delivered 
by  the  express  companies  at  the  purchaser's  door."  He  also  calls 
attention  to  the  fact  gleaned  from  general  observation  that, 
while  public  drinking  fell  off,  private  drinking,  to  an  equal  or 
greater  extent,  took  its  place.  It  is  no  wonder  that  prohibition 
in  Iowa,  although  left  on  the  statute  books,  was  modified  in  1894 
by  the  Mulct  Law,  which  is  practically  a  tax,  procuring  exemption 
from  the  operation  of  the  prohibitory  enactment. 


XXVIII. 

PROHIBITION  IN  MAINE 

THE  prohibition  history  of  Maine  is  one  continuous  page 
of  disappointments  and  failures.  Take  for  instance,  its 
principal  city,  Portland.  Dr.  John  Koren,  of  Boston,  who,  under 
the  auspices  of  the  Committee  of  Fifty,  in  1894,  thoroughly  in- 
vestigated the  workings  of  prohibitory  legislation  in  the  Pine 
State,  says  of  Portland  in  his  report :  "The  city  is  not  afflicted 
with  a  vicious  floating  population,  its  inhabitants  are  chiefly  of 
native  stock ;  there  are  no  extensive  manufacturing  interests 
drawing  together  large  numbers  of  operatives  of  the  same  class ; 
indeed,  the  conditions  for  a  fair  test  of  the  prohibitory  law  have 
been  and  are  as  good  there  as  in  any  seaoort  of  its  size  in  the 
country." 

And  yet  the  failures  of  prohibition  in  this  city  from  1860  to 
1894  (population,  36,425  in  1890),  present  a  most  disheartening 
picture.  During  that  time,  while  no  distilleries  or  breweries  were 
suffered  to  exist  in  the  State,  neither  the  supply  of  liquors  was 
lessened  nor  their  selling-price  disturbed ;  only  their  quality  be- 
came much  inferior.  Open  bars  existed  in  great  numbers.  The 
apothecary  shops  supplied  liquor  by  the  bottle  as  frequently  as 
called  for.  There  sprang  up  "pocket-peddlers,"  whose  number 
in  1892  was  estimated  at  nearly  200.  It  was  not  possible  to  sup- 
press their  business.  In  1893  no  less  than  161  persons  paid 
United  States  special  liquor  taxes  in  Portland.  In  1894  not  less 
than  a  dozen  saloons  were  clustered  about  the  Grand  Trunk  Sta- 
tion or  in  its  vicinity.  Most  of  the  frequenters  of  the  illicit 
saloons  were  young  men,  some  of  them  boys  between  twelve  and 
sixteen  years  of  age.  Occasionally  small  girls  had  "growlers" 
filled.  Older  girls  were  present  to  drink  and  to  talk  with  the  men. 
Drunkenness  in  its  various  stages  was  visible,  especially  in  the 
places  of  the  lowest  grade.  "Gilt-edge"  saloons  were  conducted 
for  the  convenience  of  the  wealthy  and  more  refined.  Many  of 
the  proprietors  obtained  considerable  revenue  from  policy-dealing. 
By  systematized  bribery  and  corruption  they  were  successful  in 


68  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

evading  the  law.  Intended  police  visits  were  tipped  off  in  time 
for  them  to  vacate  their  premises  temporarily.  Eighty  "kitchen 
bars"  were  in  operation,  infesting  whole  blocks  in  different  parts 
of  the  city.  Five  of  the  principal  hotels  sold  liquor  at  bars  and 
dispensed  it  in  private  rooms  or  at  table.  They  were  mulcted,  by 
way  of  blackmail,  as  high  as  $100  per  month.  Oyster  houses 
sold  beer  in  large  quantities.  Twenty  drug  stores  existed  simply 
for  the  purpose  of  selling  liquor.  Liquor  was  sold  at  the  apothe- 
cary shops  on  Sundays.  Bottling  establishments,  that  put  up 
large  quantities  of  mineral  waters,  derived  an  equally  large  reve- 
nue from  the  sale  of  liquor.  Delivery  of  beer  to  private  houses 
was  effected  with  impunity.  Express  companies  did  a  thriving 
business  with  liquor  in  packages.  Drinking  clubs  increased  in 
number,  and  in  legitimate  clubs  there  were  private  lockers  in 
which  liquor  was  kept.  The  Portland  Liquor  Agency,  established 
by  the  State,  became  a  legalized  rumshop,  and  carried  a  full  line 
of  goods  from  alcohol  to  champagne.  The  principal  liquors  or- 
dered from  the  State  Commissioner  were  whisky  and  rum.  Es- 
timating the  population  in  1893  at  about  40,000,  there  was  one 
drinking  place  to  every  219  inhabitants  (182  altogether).  The 
high  sheriff  of  Cumberland  county  said  that  there  were  400  rum- 
sellers  in  the  city.  The  unblushing  manner  in  which  defendants 
and  their  witnesses  resorted  to  perjury  helped  to  perplex  matters. 
Perjury  was  made  a  lucrative  business  by  "professional"  witness- 
es. The  habit  of  using  wines  and  malt  beverages  at  table  grew 
more  common.  Drinking  among  the  wage-earners  was  on  the 
increase.  In  the  dearth  of  good  pleasure  resorts  and  public 
amusements  young  men  took  to  private  tippling.  As  one  of  the 
.labor  leaders  explained :  "The  prohibitionists  try  to  take  the  bar- 
rooms away  from  the  boys,  and  give  them  nothing  instead,  ex- 
cept the  churches."  "Hard"  liquor  was  sold  of  an  inferior  qual- 
ity, producing  the  quicker  and  more  violent  forms  of  intoxica- 
tion. The  general  impression  borne  out  by  statistics  prevailed 
that  drunkenness  in  Portland  was  as  frequent  as  ever  before  the 
constitutional  amendment  went  into  effect,  if  not  more  so.  One 
of  the  judges  of  the  Supreme  Court  said:  "It  is  a  question 
whether  the  prohibitory  law  makes  more  hypocrites  or  more 
drunkards." 


PROHIBITION  IN  MAINE  69 

The  results  were  comparatively  as  bad  in  the  country  towns, 
although  these  were  far  removed  from  the  temptations  of  a  great 
city,  and  with  a  strong  prohibition  sentiment  prevailing.  Follow- 
ing is  the  unsavory  record  of  Farmington,  in  Oxford  county, 
with  a  nearly  homogeneous  population  of  native  stock  (3,207 
inhabitants  in  1890)  :  Five  United  States  special  liquor  taxes 
paid  for  by  residents  in  1894.  Two  hotels  dispensed  both  malt 
and  distilled  liquors  to  their  guests  and  others.  One  of  the  three 
drug  stores  made  a  business  of  selling  liquors.  Three  other 
retail  places  made  illicit  sales.  From  one  to  six  packages  of 
liquor  arrived  by  express  every  day.  Persons  walked  the  streets 
under  the  influence  of  patent  medicine  preparations.  There  were 
thirty-five  arrests  for  drunkenness  in  one  year  (in  1889). 

This  certainly  was  an  exceedingly  bad  showing  for  prohibi- 
tion in  a  population  of  3,207  in  a  largely  agricultural  community. 
And  prohibition  has  no  better  record  to  exhibit  for  Portland  at 
the  present  time  —  in  fact  it  is  worse.  From  the  United  States 
Census  Report  of  1905,  published  in  1907,  we  learn  that  in  the 
former  year  Portland,  with  an  estimated  population  of  54,330, 
had  1,525  arrests  for  drunkenness  and  89  arrests  for  disturbing 
the  peace.  That  means  an  average  of  2,806.9  arrests  for  drunk- 
enness and  163.8  arrests  for  disturbing  the  peace  per  10,000  of 
population. 

Rev.  S.  F.  Pearson,  the  most  unflinching  prohibition  sheriff 
Maine  ever  had,  gives  the  following  pen-picture  of  the  impotency 
of  legal  coercion  in  the  Pine  State : 

"We  got  the  law.  The  flag  of  prohibition  was  flung  out 
from  the  water  tower  of  the  constitution,  and  the  system  was 
made  a  part  of  the  organic  law  of  the  State.  And  then  we  said, 
'We  are  safe  now !  The  law  will  protect  us.  We  shall  not  need 
to  go  to  the  lodge  or  the  temperance  meeting  again.  We  hardly 
need  even  pray  now/  What  has  been  done  ?  With  the  law  have 
we  been  able  to  abolish  the  saloons?  No!  Drunkenness  is  on 
the  increase,  especially  among  the  young  men.  We  are  utterly 
powerless  to  take  the  saloon  away  from  drinking  men.  There  is 
no  temperance  sentiment  in  Maine  today.  Give  the  question 
to  the  people,  and,  unless  the  rural  vote  saved  the  law,  Maine 
would  be  a  license  State." 


XXIX. 

ARRESTS  FOR  DRUNKENNESS 

THAT  prohibition  rarely  decreases,  and  much  oftener  in- 
creases, the  ratio  of  arrests  for  drunkenness  may  be  easily 
gathered  from  comparative  statistics  covering  arrests  for  visible 
intoxication  and  disturbing  the  peace  in  license  and  no-license  or 
prohibition  cities.  It  is  true  that  these  statistics  must  often  be 
taken  with  modifications  to  get  at  their  real  significance  and 
value.  The  tables  may  be  constructed  on  different  principles  in 
different  years ;  the  law  applying  to  persons  found  drunk  may 
have  been  altered  and  the  policy  of  liquor-sellers  in  regard  to 
protecting  intoxicated  persons  from  arrest  may  vary.  Arrests 
represent  more  a  legal  dealing  with  this  offense  than  the  sum 
total  of  public  intoxication.  Sometimes  the  law  is  strictly  en- 
forced, and  sometimes  it  is  not.  An  arrest  for  disturbing  the 
peace  does  not  always  and  invariably  involve  a  case  of  drunken- 
ness. But  whatever  these  divergencies  in  computation  may  be, 
it  is  certain  that  in  no-license  or  prohibition  territory  special  efforts 
are  always  made  to  execute  the  laws  against  drunkards  and  dis- 
turbers of  the  peace.  If,  however,  the  number  of  these  arrests 
should  show  a  very  marked  increase  over  those  in  license  cities  of 
equal  population,  even  though  the  law  were  less  rigorously  en- 
forced in  the  latter,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  prohibitive  legisla- 
tion is  inoperative  and  a  failure. 

Let  us  cite  a  few  examples.  The  following  are  the  ratios 
of  arrests  for  drunkenness  and  for  disturbing  the  peace  during 
1905  in  a  few  prohibition  cities: 


Estimated 

Number  of  Arrests  per  10,000 
of  Population  for  — 

Population 

Drunkenness  \     «*»*£« 

Kansas  City   Kansas           

67,614 

1,970.0             705.5 

Portland    Maine             .          

54,330 

2,806.9              163.8 

Topeka  Kansas                    

37,641 

1,885.9              775.7 

Wichita.  Kansas.  . 

31,110 

4,381.2              478.9 

ARRESTS  FOR  DRUNKENNESS  71 

These  returns  are  deserving  of  more  than  a  passing  con- 
sideration, and  invite  comparative  analysis  with  those  from  license 
cities.  Let  us  begin  with  Wichita.  Its  record  is  exceeded  by 
only  eight  out  of  sixty-seven  cities  of  the  United  States  having 
less  than  50,000  population  in  1905,  and  scattered  over  twenty- 
six  States.  These  eight  are  Birmingham,  Alabama;  Augusta, 
Georgia  ;  Mobile,  Alabama ;  East  St.  Louis,  Illinois  ;  Little  Rock, 
Arkansas ;  Jacksonville,  Florida ;  Chattanooga,  Tennessee,  and 
Macon,  Georgia.  And,  with  the  exception  of  East  St.  Louis,  in 
all  of  these  the  carrying  out  of  the  liquor  laws  presents  peculiar 
difficulties  by  reason  of  a  large  negro  population.  Comparisons 
with  license  cities  of  greater  population  would  still  more  sharply 
accentuate  the  abnormal  amount  of  visible  intoxication  in  Wichita. 
Topeka,  Kansas,  with  a  reduced  ratio  of  arrests,  nevertheless 
compares  unfavorably  with  nearly  one-half  of  the  cities  having 
in  1905  a  population  of  less  than  50,000.  Thirty-two  out  of 
forty-seven  cities  with  a  population  of  between  50,000  and  100,- 
000  had  a  lower  rate  of  arrests  for  drunkenness  and  for  disturb- 
ing the  peace  than  Portland,  Maine.  Kansas  City,  Kansas,  would 
have  had  a  much  higher  ratio  of  arrests  but  for  the  fact  that 
many  of  its  "drunks"  are  charged  to  its  sister  city  of  the  same 
name  across  the  river,  which  is  under  license. 

But  figures  by  no  means  express  the  total  amount  of  visible 
intoxication  in  one  year  in  these  prohibition  cities.  Where  the 
use  of  alcoholic  liquors  is  interdicted  by  law  there  is  always  a 
great  deal  of  private  tippling.  Fear  of  arrest  on  the  part  of  the 
illicit  seller  will  prompt  him  to  shield  cases  of  intoxication  in 
which  he  figured  as  an  agent,  from  publicity.  The  actual  count 
of  cases,  including  those  over  and  above  the  face  of  official  re- 
turns, is,  therefore,  much  greater  in  prohibition  than  in  license 
cities. 

Similar  results  are  recognized  by  comparing  statistics  of 
license  and  no-license  cities,  as  may  be  gathered  from  a  study  of 
the  following  table : 


PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 


CITIES 


Estimated 
Population 


Number  of  Arrests 
for  Drunkenness  per 
10,000  of  Population 


^^orcester                        .  • 

128  135 

2794  7 

Fall  River                   .  .              

105,762 

2097  1 

L/owell                                          

94,889 

3909  8 

New  Bedford                                 

74,362 

1565  3 

Springfield                                           .  . 

73,540 

2511  5 

Lawrence                  '                       

70,050 

2389  7 

Holyoke 

49,934 

2052  .  7 

Brockton                                              

47,794 

2845.5 

Brockton  is  the  only  one  of  these  Massachusetts  cities  that 
for  a  long  time  has  been  under  a  no-license  regime,  and  is  suffi- 
ciently removed  from  license  centers  to  avoid  complicated  con- 
ditions, and  yet  it  makes  an  unfavorable  showing  compared  with 
all  the  others,  excepting  Lowell.  The  conclusion  must  be  that 
prohibitive  laws  in  Brockton  are  practically  useless  and  inoperative. 


XXX. 

ALCOHOL  AND  CRIME 

FROM  the  lesson  of  comparative  statistics  on  drunkenness, 
we  pass  on  to  the  subject  of  intoxication  as  related  to  crime 
in  general,  and  the  efficacy  of  prohibition  methods  in  lowering 
the  totals  of  criminal  records.  The  subjects  are  correlative,  for 
it  stands  to  reason  -that  if  prohibition  is  inoperative  in  suppress- 
ing drunkenness,  it  must  be  equally  so  in  preventing  resultant 
crime. 

The  prison  statistics  of  the  United  States  Census  Report  of 
1904  establish  the  fact  that  in  this  year  only  seven  of  all  the  States 
and  Territories  showed  a  higher  ratio  of  commitments  for  of- 
fenses against  public  policy  (drunkenness,  disorderly  conduct  and 
minor  offenses)  than  Maine.  Twenty-four  States  had  higher 
ratios  than  Kansas,  and  only  twenty-one  higher  than  North  Dako- 
ta. In  the  ratio  of  commitment's  for  offenses  against  property, 
Maine  was  the  twenty-ninth  highest  in  the  list.  Such  States 
as  Illinois,  Minnesota,  Wisconsin,  Nebraska  and  Iowa,  each  pre- 
sented a  lower  record.  Prohibition  Kansas  was  exceeded  by  only 
eight  States  in  the  sum  total  of  the  same  class  of  offenses.  North 
Dakota,  being  a  purely  agricultural  State,  made  a  better  showing, 
but  even  at  that  seven  non-prohibition  States  had  a  less  record 
of  crime. 

In  the  ratio  of  offenses  against  the  person,  including  homi- 
cides, Kansas  and  North  Dakota  were  ahead  of  Maine,  but 
Maine  took  the  lead  among  her  North  Atlantic  sister  States  in 
the  number  of  homicides,  and  homicide  is  recognized  as  a  very 
frequent  companion  of  intoxication.  There  were  forty-four 
commitments  in  Maine  for  this  crime,  equivalent  to  6.2  per  100,- 
000  of  population  —  a  higher  ratio  than  was  found  in  any  of 
the  other  eight  States  in  the  North  Atlantic  division,  except 
Connecticut. 

The  same  story  is  told  by  the  comparison  of  statistics  be- 
tween prohibition,  or  no-license,  and  license  cities. 


74 


PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 


The  following  tables  will  speak  for  themselves: 


CITY 

Estimated 
Population 

Number  of  Arrests 

For  all             Per  10,000  of 
Offenses        j     Population 

Kansas  City  Kansas 

67,614 
54,330 
37,641 
31,110 
47,794 
636,973 
312,948 
283,289 
261,974 
89,111 
76,271 
74,362 
222,660 
212,198 
155,287 
116,111 
84,180 
.      63,132 

3,755 

2,525 
2,211 
2,785 
2,334 
26,255 
•6,804 
7,541 
7,590 
1,628 
1,809 
1,862 
7,545 
7,795 
5,125 
3,778 
3,154 
2,075 

553.3 
483.1 
587.3 
895.2 
488.3 
412.0 
217.4 
266.1 
289.7 
182.6 
237.1 
250.3 
338.8 
367.3 
330.0 
325.3 
374.8 
328.6 

Portland   Maine 

Topeka    Kansas 

Wichita   Kansas 

Brockton,  Massachusetts 

St.  L/ouis   Missouri 

Milwaukee,  Wisconsin 

Newark,  New  Jersey 

Minneapolis  Minnesota 

Reading,  Pennsylvania 

Troy,  New  York  

New  Bedford,  Massachusetts  
IvOuisville  Kentucky 

Indianapolis,  Indiana  

Toledo,  Ohio  

Scranton,  Pennsylvania  

Trenton,  New  Jersey  

Evansville,  Indiana  

• 


It  will  be  seen  that  the  four  prohibition  cities,  Kansas  City, 
ortland,  Topeka  and  Wichita,  and  the  no-license  city,  Brockton, 
each  a  greater  criminal  record  than  any  one  of  the  license 
cities  in  the  list.  Milwaukee,  with  a  population  of  312,948,  under 
low  license,  exhibits  the  smallest  ratio.  This  result  is  owing, 
rhaps,  more  to  the  character  of  its  population  than  to  any 
special  influence  of  its  liquor  laws.  The  average  of  New 
s  Bedford,  Mass.,  under  license  was  only  250.3  as  against  488.3 
of  no-license  Brockton  in  the  same  State.  Newark,  with  its 
teeming  population  of  wage-earners,  had  a  ratio  of  only  266.1 
under  low  license.  St.  Louis  (population  over  600,000)  had  a 
lower  average  than  any  one  of  the  prohibition  or  no-license  cities, 
ven  the  metropolis,  New  York,  with  its  more  than  five  million 
inhabitants,  its  continuous  influx  of  foreigners  and  transients, 
had  a  lower  percentage  of  crime  under  high  license  than  any  one 
of  the  prohibition  cities  of  Kansas.  Out  of  152  cities  in  the 
United  States  ranging  in  population  from  30,000  to  5,000,000, 
there  are  no  less  than  eighty  which  show  a  lower  ratio  of  arrests 
per  10,000  inhabitants  than  Portland,  Maine. 


ALCOHOL  AND  CRIME  75 

There  can  be  but  one  of  two  conclusions  —  either  prohibition 
is  inoperative  and  favorable  to  an  increase  of  crime,  or  there  may 
be  no  measurable  relation  between  drunkenness  and  crime  in  gen- 
eral. The  latter  assumption  seems  to  have  considerable  weight, 
for  statistics  show  that  a  large  crime  rate  does  not  always  depend 
upon  the  volume  of  visible  intoxication.  England  and  Germany 
each  consume  much  more  alcoholic  liquors  annually  in  proportion 
to  population  than  the  United  States,  and  yet  they  have  a  much 
smaller  crime  rate.  Denmark  is  high  up  in  the  consumption  of 
intoxicants,  but  its  average  crime  rate  is  far  below  that  of  Italy, 
which  is  a  wine-drinking  country,  and  regarded  among  the  most 
temperate  of  nations.  Germans,  Irish,  Scandinavians  and  English 
are  the  most  numerous  among  the  drinkers  of  alcoholic  liquors  in 
this  country,  but  this  proclivity  does  not  make  them  the  most  crimi- 
nal. Of  the  Germans  the  United  States  Census  Report,  1904, 
says :  "Relative  to  their  numerical  representation  and  import- 
ance among  the  foreign-born  peoples  in  the  United  States,  the 
Germans  are  the  least  conspicuous  among  the  foreign-born  pris- 
oners." Physiological  experiments  are  establishing  the  fact  that 
congenital  defects  and  a  degenerate  organism  are  more  frequently 
the  sources  from  which  emanate  criminal  careers  than  excessive 
drinking  habits,  and  that  the  latter  are  frequently  rather  the 
result  than  the  cause  of  crime  — •  in  fact  only  one  of  many  other 
serious  consequences. 


XXXI. 

ALCOHOL  AND  INSANITY 

THERE  is  no  reliable  information  by  means  of  which  the 
ratio  of  insanity  cases  caused  by  the  abuse  of  alcohol  can 
be  ascertained  with  accuracy.  The  Government  reports  do  not 
attempt  any  distinction  between  forms  of  insanity,  and  do  not 
assign  any  causes  for  the  different  varieties  of  mental  disease  — 
and  in  the  reports  of  State  asylums  and  lunacy  commissions  the 
figures  are  frequently  amenable  to  correction  because  of  errors 
in  the  history  of  individual  cases.  Dr.  J.  S.  Billings,  U.  S.  A., 
Director  of  the  Medical  Museum  and  Library,  Washington, 
D.  C.,  who  'made  a  comprehensive  investigation  of  the  relations 
of  drink  habits  to  insanity,  has  this  to  say  on  the  subject: 

"The  information  furnished  at  the  time  when  an  insane  per- 
son is  admitted  to  a  hospital,  with  regard  to  the  cause  of  disease, 
is  apt  to  be  unreliable.  Those  habits  of  the  patient  which  have 
been  the  most  unusual  attract  the  most  attention,  and  are  given 
the  greatest  weight,  and  in  the  case  of  persons  whose  use  of 
alcoholic  drinks  has  been  to  excess,  such  use  will  be  ascribed  as 
the  cause,  although  there  may  be  a  number  of  other  causes,  both 
inherited  and  acquired.  In  those  cases  reported  as  periodical 
drinkers,  it  is  very  doubtful  whether  the  drink  habits  were  causa- 
tive so  much  as  they  were  symptomatic.  It  is  evident  from  the 
study  of  the  tables  that,  as  a  rule,  periodical  drinking  has  not 
been  considered  as  a  symptom  of  disease  of  the  nervous  system, 
though  it  is  well  known  to  be  such  in  many  cases." 

Dr.  Billings  concludes,  therefore,  that  "it  is  certainly  im- 
probable that  near1y  one-quarter  of  the  cases  of  insanity  in  this 
country  are  due  to  the  use  of  alcoholic  drinks,  as  might  be 
inferred  from  these  figures  (from  the  Massachusetts  Bureau  of 
Statistics,  Bellevue  Hospital  and  Presbyterian  Hospital,  New 
York),  and  while  in  a  given  case  of  an  excessive  drinker  who 
becomes  insane  the  connection  between  cause  and  effect  may  be 
plausibly  made  out,  it  is  necessary  to  take  into  careful  considera- 
tion other  inherited  or  acquired  abnormities  or  weaknesses  of 


ALCOHOL  AND  INSANITY 


77 


the  nervous  system.  In  any  case  where  there  is  a  tendency  to 
psychic  or  nervous  instability  and  abnormal  action,  either  in- 
herited or  acquired,  the  excessive  use  of  alcohol  may  act  as  the 
exciting  cause,  like  a  torch  to  inflammable  material,  but  the  same 
result  may  be  produced  with  any  excess  creating  a  strain  on  the 
nervous  system,  and  the  alcohol  would  produce  no  effect  upon  a 
nervous  system  in  normally  good  condition."  It  would,  therefore, 
appear  to  be  indispensable  to  go  behind  the  returns  in  order  to 
get  at  the  truth  of  many  an  alleged  causation  of  insanity,  which 
has  been  labeled  an  abuse  of  alcohol. 

The  following  statistics  cover  commitments  of  insane  dur- 
ing 1903  or  1904  to  single  institutions,  and  in  one  or  two  cases 
commitments  during  a  series  of  years : 


STATE 

Xumber  of  Insane 
Committed 

Per  cent  of  Com- 
mitments in  which 
intemperance 
was  assigned  cause 

Arkansas  

236 

5.5 

Colorado  

384 

9.6 

Delaware  

105 

18.0 

Georgia 

359 

1  6 

Kentucky 

249 

8  8 

Ivouisiana 

342 

4.0 

Maryland  .... 

237 

12.6 

Massachusetts  

2,414 

13.5 

Michigan 

9  926 

8  1 

Missouri  

415 

3.6 

New  Jersey 

295 

8.1 

New  York 

6,136 

12.4 

Wisconsin 

7,445 

5.2 

The  very  caption,  "assigned  cause,"  shows  that  the  figures 
have  no  certain  scientific  value.  Dr.  Printzing  in  his  "Handbuch 
der  Medicinischen  Statistik,"  gives  the  most  recent  averages  on 
the  subject  for  the  following  European  countries : 

Prussia 13.2 

Wurttemburg 9.2 

France 13.7 

Austria 14.4 

Switzerland 10.8 

Holland   .  .7.2 


Commissioners  on  lunacy  have  found  that  intemperance  is 
responsible  for  22.1  per  cent  of  the  admissions  to  insane  asylums 


78  PROHIBITION  — •  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

in  England  and  Wales.  The  proportion  of  cases  attributable  in 
part  or  wholly  to  intemperance  in  the  Edinburgh  Royal  Asylum 
is  computed  at  22.1  per  cent.  Dr.  Branthwaite,  the  Inspector  of 
Inebriates'  Homes  in  England,  has  shown  that  about  62  per  cent 
of  their  inmates  are  mentally  defective,  and  that  many  of  these 
are  not  insane  on  account  of  drink,  but  became  inebriates  because 
they  were  insane.  The  insanity  was  principally  caused  by  con- 
genital defects,  and  drunkenness  was  only  one  out  of  several 
symptomatic  concomitants  that  aggravated  the  disease.  It  is 
next  to  impossible  to  separate  the  symptomatic  cases  from  those 
which  are  directly  caused  by  chronic  alcoholism.  The  situation 
is  complicated  by  the  fact  that  many  thousands  are  annually  dis- 
charged as  cured  from  insane  asylums  who  subsequently  beget 
children  prone  to  mental  derangements.  If  insanity  should  de- 
velop in  these  it  is  ascribed  solely  to  alcohol,  whereas  in  most 
cases,  but  for  the  congenital  defects,  alcohol  would  not  have  pro- 
duced the  mental  disease  at  all. 

That  there  is  a  ratio  of  insanity  cases  directly  traceable  to 
the  abuse  of  alcohol  there  can  be  no  doubt,  but  it  is  much  smaller 
than  would  appear  from  statistical  tables.  And  whatever  may 
properly  be  chargeable  to  alcohol,  be  the  proportion  great  or 
small,  it  is  certain  that  prohibition  States  have  not  assisted  to- 
wards its  reduction.  Kansas  and  North  Dakota  do  not  compare 
favorably  with  many  license  States  in  the  ratio  of  insane  per 
100,000  population,  whose  condition  is  ascribed  to  alcohol. 
Maine  in  1890  was  one  of  four  States  in  which  "the  number  of 
insane  enumerated  outside  of  hospitals  exceeded  the  number 
found  in  these  institutions,"  and  nevertheless  in  1903  it  had  125.3 
insane  in  hospitals  per  100.000  population. 


XXXII. 
ALCOHOL  AND  MORTALITY 

MORTALITY  statistics  give  the  number  of  deaths  directly 
due  to  alcoholism,  but  they  do  not  mention  alcohol  as  a 
contributing  or  causative  factor  where  it  carries  only  the  in- 
direct responsibility  for  fatal  disease.  Since,  however,  the  same 
disease  may  be  contracted  from  other  sources,  there  remains  no 
reliable  way  of  ascertaining  for  just  how  many  deaths  alcohol 
is  indirectly  responsible.  That  this  number  is  very  much  in  ex- 
cess of  the  record  of  deaths  caused  directly  by  alcohol  there  can 
not  be  the  slightest  doubt.  The  United  States  Census  Report  on 
Mortality  Statistics  for  1906  says :  "The  death  rate  from  alco- 
holism in  1906  was  8.6  per  100,000  of  population,  the  same  as 
the  rate  for  the  year  1903.  It  is  not  at  all  likely  that  there 
should  be  very  definite  returns  of  death  due  to  this  cause,  es- 
pecially those  due  to  the  indirect  effects  of  alcohol.  Many 
chronic  degenerative  diseases,  such  as  cirrhosis  of  the  liver,  must 
be  considered  in  estimating  the  total  effect  of  alcoholism,  and 
as  the  certificates  of  death  from  secondary  effects  of  alcohol 
frequently  make  no  reference  to  alcoholism  as  a  primary  cause, 
it  is  impossible  to  make  a  complete  statement  in  this  respect." 
The  uncertainty  of  the  subject  is  quite  the  same  in  European 
countries.  Dr.  Printzing  says,  "a  comparison  between  different 
countries  is  not  feasible,"  because  many  cases  of  alcoholic 
poisoning  are  entered  under  organic  disease.  With  this  reserva- 
tion, the  death  rate  from  chronic  alcoholism  per  100,000  popu- 
lation is  in  Prussia,  according  to  the  best  authorities,  7.9 ;  in 
Bavaria,  7.4;  in  Baden,  2.4;  in  Italy,  1.7;  in  England,  19.2; 
in  Scotland,  10.1.  In  Switzerland  during  the  years  1900-1903 
alcoholism  was  a  direct  or  contributory  cause  in  10.3  of  each  100 
deaths  among  the  male,  and  1.9  among  the  female  population. 
In  Denmark  6.7  per  cent  of  the  deaths  among  males  and  0.8 
per  cent  among  females  .are  directly  or  indirectly  due  to  drink. 

But  the  assignment  of  alcohol  as  a  contributing  cause  in 
fatal  diseases  is  not  always  reliable,  whether  this  be  in  hospital 
or  private  records,  for  the  history  of  an  individual  case  may  not 
have  been  correctly  ascertained.  Some  diseases,  such  as  cirrhosis 


80 


PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 


of  liver,  pneumonia,  etc.,  most  commonly  ascribed  to  an  abuse  of 
alcohol,  are  not  infrequently  exempt  from  any  such  relation. 
Thus  Dr.  Printzing  mentions  the  fact  that  "cirrhosis  of  the  liver 
occurs  not  infrequently  without  being  preceded  by  overindulgence 
in  alcohol." 

Whatever  the  responsibility  of  alcohol  may  be  in  the  mor- 
tality rate,  it  will  not  be  denied  that  it  causes  greater  havoc  in 
prohibition  than  in  license  States.  Let  us  compare,  for  example, 
the  State  of  Maine  with  other  States.  The  following  table  from 
the  United  States  Census  Report,  1906,  furnishes  its  own  moral : 

Death  Rate  per  J  00,000  of  Population  in  Cities  and  Rural  Districts 
of  Each  Registration  State,  from  Alcoholism— J  906. 


STATE 

Cities 

Rural 
Districts 

Maine             .      ... 

8  4 

4  3 

Indiana 

5  5 

2  3 

Maryland                  

5  8 

3  3 

Massachusetts 

5  6 

3  4 

Michigan                                    

5  8 

3  2 

New  Hampshire 

5  1 

6  6 

Pennsylvania 

7  1 

4  7 

Rhode  Island 

8  0 

12  5 

South  Dakota  ;  

7.9 

4.9 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  death  rate  in  cities  of  Maine  by 
reason  of  alcohol  is  greater  than  that  in  cities  of  Indiana,  Mary- 
land, Massachusetts,  Michigan,  New  Hampshire,  Pennsylvania, 
Rhode  Island  and  South  Dakota,  all  of  them  license  States. 
The  death  rate  in  rural  districts  is  also  higher  in  prohibition 
Maine  than  in  Indiana,  Maryland,  Massachusetts  and  Michigan, 
the  rate  being  nearly  the  same  in  Pennsylvania  and  South  Dako- 
ta. All  this  is  evidence  indisputable  that  prohibition  is  inopera- 
tive in  Maine ;  and  comparative  statistics  bear  out  the  same  con- 
dition for  Kansas  and  North  Dakota. 

A  comparison  of  the  United  States  Census  Reports  of  1880 
and  1900  shows  that  during  this  period  of  twenty  years  the  aver- 
age death  rate,  attributed  to  drink,  increased  in  prohibition,  and 
decreased  in  license  States.  In  proportion  to  population,  forty 
per  cent  more  people  died  from  the  effects  of  alcohol  in  prohibi- 
tion than  in  license  States.  What  a  body-blow  to  the  efficacy 
of  prohibition! 


XXXIII. 

PROHIBITION  AND  PROSPERITY 

IF  PROHIBITION  materially  reduced  the  volume  of  Visible 
intoxication  and  established  a  reign  of  abstinence,  there 
might  be  some  reason  for  the  claim  of  its  name  being  synony- 
mous with  prosperity.  But  in  the  light  of  facts  and  figures  cited 
this  is  the  reverse  of  being  true.  How  then  can  it  be  credited 
with  producing  any  degree  of  prosperity  at  all? 

The  wealth  of  a  State  may  be  gauged  with  reasonable, 
though  not  always  with  unerring,  certainty  by  its  total  banking 
resources.  In  the  lines  of  such  a  test,  even  though  it  were 
granted  for  the  sake  of  argument  that  prohibition  is  reasonably 
effective,  the  prohibition  States,  Maine,  Kansas  and  North  Da- 
kota, would  show  up  very  unfavorably  in  comparison  with  most 
of  those  under  tax  or  license.  The  following  figures  from  the 
report  of  the  Comptroller  of  the  Currency,  June  1,  1907,  will 
speak  for  themselves  in  regard  to  Maine: 

AH  Banks 


STVTK 

Resources 

Average 
per  Capita 

Maine           

$182,523,663 

$254.57 

New  Hampshire 

124,308,511 

284  46 

Vermont  

92,809,820 

264.41 

Massachusetts  ...              
Rhode  Island                                     .  . 

1,456,344,818 
243,836,859 

470.54 
486  70 

Connecticut                                    

406,568,508 

393.96 

Total  New  England  States. . . .       $2,506,392,179 


$408.67 


Maine  is  lowest  on  this  list,  which  gives  the  per  capita  bank- 
ing resources  of  the  New  England  States.  So  Kansas,  in  bank- 
ing resources,  is  behind  all  the  Middle  West  and  Western  States, 
with  the  exception  of  Indiana,  New  Mexico  and  Oklahoma. 
North  Dakota,  with  a  better  showing  than  Kansas,  has,  neverthe- 
less, a  lower  average  than  any  one  of  the  surrounding  license 
States.  The  evidence  is  presented  in  the  following  table: 


PROHIBITION  — •  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 


STATE 

Resources 

Average 
per  Capita 

Ohio        

$940,824,933 

$208  15 

Indiana 

345  348  616 

124  50 

Illinois 

1  242  266  807 

223  11 

Michigan 

391  729  586 

149  80 

^Visconsin          .... 

292,910,943 

127  69 

Minnesota           

306  310,683 

148  05 

Iowa                       .  . 

420,018,978 

190  05 

Missouri  ....          

725,718,351 

213  45 

North  Dakota  . 

59,840,530 

128  69 

South  Dakota 

70,498,433 

150  64 

Nebraska     

206,356,926 

192.14 

Kansas 

203  346,534 

126  30 

Montana 

62  198,975 

197  46 

Wyoming 

20  386,762 

188  77 

Colorado 

157  649,181 

251  43 

New  Mexico 

19  991  ,-616 

90  05 

Oklahoma  . 

55,486,754 

85  36 

If  any  importance  is- to  be  attached  to  savings  bank  deposits 
as  evidencing  the  prosperity  of  a  State,  comparisons  in  this  re- 
spect will  be  of  no  advantage  to  the  prohibition  States.  Maine 
has  not  only  a  lower  ratio  of  depositors,  but  the  smallest  per  capita 
deposit  of  any  of  her  neighboring  States,  as  is  manifest  from  the 
following  statistics  of  the  Comptroller,  United  States  Treasury, 
for  1907: 


STATK 

Population 

Number  of 
Depositors 

Amount  of 
Deposits 

Per 
Capita 

Proportion 
of  Depos- 
itors to 
Population 

Maine  

694,466 

221,883 

$84,394,909 

$121.52 

1  to  3.1 

N.  Hampshire  .  . 
Vermont 

411,588 
343,641 

183,240 
154,325 

81,124,710 
57,444  294 

197.10 
167  16 

1  to  2.2 
Ito2  2 

Massachusetts  . 
Rhode  Island  .  . 
Connecticut  .  .  . 
New  York  

2,805,346 
428,556 
908,420 
7,268,894 

1,908,378 
122,319 
517,301 
2,740,808 

694,081,142 
66,391,174 
246,264,985 
1,394,296,034 

247.41 
154.92 
271.09 
191.82 

Itol4 
1  to  3.5 
1  to  1.7 
1  to  2.6 

The  statistics  of  building  and  loan  associations  in  different 
States  furnish  no  available  ground  for  comparisons  of  prosperity 
as  between  prohibition  and  license  States. 


XXXIV. 

PROHIBITION  AND  INDUSTRY 

HAVING  demonstrated  the  inefficacy  of  prohibition  in  sup- 
pressing the  evils  of  alcoholic  abuse,  we  will  now  discuss 
briefly  the  industrial  side  of  the  liquor  traffic.  Here  we  are  at 
once  confronted  with  one  of  the  most  stupendous  falsehoods 
ever  uttered  —  that  the  annual  expenditure  for  alcoholic  drink, 
which  prohibitionists  estimate  to  be  over  two  billions  of  dollars, 
represents  that  much  direct  cost,  or  financial  loss,  to  the  Nation. 
They  ignore  the  fact  that  whatever  the  expenditure  may  be, 
three-fourths  of  it  comes  from  moderate  or  occasional  drinkers, 
whose  habits  do  not  make  them  lawbreakers,  and  who  are  no 
more  a  charge  upon  the  public  treasury  than  the  most  confirmed 
teetotalers.  It  is  this  use  by  overwhelming  numbers,  as  against 
the  abuse  of  alcoholic  liquors  by  comparatively  few,  that  makes 
their  production  a  legitimate  industry  de  jure  and  de  facto  —  de 
jure  because  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  either  their  manufacture 
or  sale  must  necessarily  encourage  excess,  and  de  facto  because 
most  people  in  fact  use  them  moderately,  just  as  they  do  foods. 
The  extent  and  importance  of  this  industry  may  be  gathered 
from  statistics  (1907-1908)  which  show  that  during  that  year  the 
sum  total  paid  by  brewers,  maltsters  and  distillers  into  the  pro- 
ducing sources  of  the  United  States  was  approximately  $369,- 
851,092,  apportioned  as  follows : 

36,361,975   bushels   of  corn $27,274,208 

62,760,000  bushels  of  barley 62,760,000 

5,595,000  bushels  of  rye 3,916,889 

Sugar  products,  hops  and  assorted  grains....     16,358,000 

Labor   (producers  only) 54,542,000 

Coal  and  other   fuel 5,000,000 

Bottles    15,000,000 

Lumber,  rubber  goods,  steam  engines,  machin- 
ery, tools  and  other  implements 150,000,000 

Fire   insurance   premiums 15,000,000 

Railroad,  freight  and  express. . 20,000,000 

$369,851,092 

Wine   growers,    by   their   purchases    of   grapes,    machinery, 
casks,  bottles,  etc.,  increased  this  sum  easily  to  $500,000,000. 


84  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

The  farmer  alone  in  the  aggregate  sold  to  the  brewers  and 
distillers  products  of  the  soil  valued  at  $250,000,000. 

The  total  value  of  the  investments  of  the  liquor  and  allied 
industries  is  estimated  at  $3,100,000,000  to  $3,600,000,000. 

In  the  manufacture  of  alcoholic  liquors  more  than  one  hun- 
dred thousand  skilled  and  unskilled  laborers  are  employed.  In 
addition,  the  industries,  closely  allied  to  and  largely  dependent 
upon  the  brewing  and  distilling  trade  of  the  United  States,  rep- 
resenting an  invested  capital  of  $500,000,000,  provide  employ- 
ment for  not  less  than  250,000  skilled  and  unskilled  workingmen. 

The  wholesale  and  retail  dealers  (over  250,000)  pay  the 
wages  of  half  a  million  more.  Viticulture  and  wine  production, 
with  their  allied  industries,  put  another  hundred  thousand  opera- 
tives on  the  pay  roll.  The  entire  liquor  traffic  pays  the  wages 
approximately  of  1,300,000  persons,  representing  nearly  one  bil- 
lion dollars  in  annual  wages. 

Prohibition  proposes  to  destroy  this  industry,  capitalized  at 
over  three  billion  dollars  and  employing  over  a  million  of  men, 
without  providing  any  compensation.  Because  it  is  inoperative 
and  helplessly  encourages,  as  we  have  shown,  a  new  brood  of 
vices,  it  can  not  but  lower  the  material  and  moral  resources  of  the 
Commonwealth.  So  far  is  it  removed  from  being  compensatory 
in  its  destructiveness.  Then,  too,  the  enforced  idleness  of  more 
than  a  million  of  men  over  and  above  the  usual  number  of  unem- 
ployed, many  of  them  with  dependent  families,  might  be  a  real 
calamity,  particularly  in  times  of  financial  depression.  So  long 
as  prohibition  is  ineffectual  (and  it  must  always  be  so)  it  is  the 
height  of  folly  to  speak  of  it  as  opening  up  new  lines  of  industry 
to  the  wage-earner,  and  encouraging  in  him  an  increased  earning 
capacity  and  saving  habits.  And  though  it  were  effectual,  it  would 
not  change  the  prosperity  of  the  moderate  drinker,  who  accord- 
ing to  the  Committee  of  Fifty's  estimate  constitutes  three-fourths 
of  the  adult  male  population  of  the  United  States.  The  strictly 
moderate  drinker  would  not  be  enabled  to  purchase  more  shoes, 
dry  goods,  clothing  or  groceries  by  reason  of  prohibition.  He 
would  probably  spend  as  much  for  soda  water  or  some  other 
luxury  as  he  formerly  did  for  beer.  The  truth  is  he  is  an  asset 
to  his  family  and  to  the  Nation,  and  not  a  liability,  whether  it  be 
under  license  or  prohibition. 


XXXV. 
PROHIBITION  AND  REVENUE 

THE  methods  of  raising  revenue  for  the  United  States  Gov- 
ernment are  to  a  great  extent  arbitrary  and  subject  to 
change.  In  a  country  of  such  vast  and  constantly  expanding 
resources  no  one  plan  or  single  industry  is  essential  to  providing 
the  most  considerable  part  of  this  revenue.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
while  the  production  and  sale  of  alcoholic  liquors  furnish  at  pres- 
ent the  bulk  of  the  United  States  internal  revenue,  there  is  nothing 
to  show  that  Uncle  Sam  might  not  be  able  to  find,  without  hard- 
ship, an  adequate  substitute,  if  the  liquor  traffic  were  suppressed. 
The  collections  from  all  distilled  spirits  and  fermented  liquors 
for  the  fiscal  year  ending  June  30,  1908,  were  as  follows : 

Distilled   spirits    $140,158,807.15 

Fermented    liquors    59,807,616.81 


$199,966,423.96 

Prohibition  would  wipe  out  $170,000,000  of  this  revenue  — 
the  entire  amount,  excepting  only  what  is  derived  from  alcohol 
used  in  the  arts  and  manufactures,  and  possibly  in  the  practice  of 
medicine.  There  would  have  to  be  a  readjustment  of  revenue 
sources,  but  that  could  be  arranged.  The  only  question  to  be 
answered  is:  "Cui  bono" — what  good  would  it  do?  The  rec- 
ords of  prohibition  States,  such  as  Maine,  Kansas  and  Dakota, 
plainly  tell  the  story  that  prohibition  extended  over  the  Nation 
would  be  as  inoperative  and  demoralizing  as  it  is  in  the  individual 
State.  The  present  annual  revenue  would,  therefore,  be  a  total  loss 
without  any  offset  of  gain  to  the  Nation  either  by  way  of  propa- 
gating temperance  or  increasing  prosperity.  Can  the  people  of 
the  United  States  afford  to  throw  away  wantonly  this  amount 
of  revenue,  which  is  part  of  the  penalty  paid  for  the  evils  of  the 
liquor  traffic,  and  of  the  cost  of  its  restriction  and  regulation? 
Would  it  pay  to  have  the  traffic  nominally  eliminated  and  lose 
the  funds  to  grapple  with  its  clandestine  and  multiplied  horrors 
in  spite  of  the  law? 


86  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

The  question  of  revenue  is  practically  the  same  for  States 
and  cities  as  it  is  for  the  general  Government.  Prohibition  ne- 
cessitates a  readjustment,  which  may  work  a  hardship  on  the 
taxpayers,  particularly  in  great  cities.  In  Birmingham,  Ala- 
bama, for  instance,  some  extraordinary  burdens  were  placed  upon 
different  lines  of  business  to  meet  the  loss  from  liquor  license, 
among  them  the  following :  A  license  fee  from  $200  to  $450  for 
banking  houses ;  $100  to  $500  for  building  and  loan  associations ; 
$300  for  each  cotton  press;  $125  for  each  fruit  store;  $1,000 
each  for  express  companies;  $12.50  to  $200  each  for  grocers; 
$65  to  $275  each  for  hotels ;  $75  to  $250  each  for  provision  deal- 
ers, and  similar  amounts  for  416  different  kinds  of  pursuits  or 
occupations.  The  contingency  of  a  distressing  effect  in  redistri- 
bution will  largely  depend  upon  local  conditions.  In  a  State  like 
New  York  the  withdrawal  of  revenue  from  liquor  licenses  would 
mean  the  necessity  of  raising  millions  from  other  sources  to  meet 
the  State  tax.  But  in  every  readjustment  there  would  be  the 
same  question  to  answer:  "Cui  bono" — "What  good  would  it 
do?"  Arrests  for  drunkenness  would  not  be  diminished,  nor  the 
public  expenditures  curtailed  on  account  of  crime  and  vice  caused 
by  intemperance.  It  would  be  a  dead  loss  of  revenue  without  a 
redeeming  feature. 


xxxvr. 

PROHIBITION  AND  "TEMPERANCE 
DRINKS" 

A  SINGULAR  phenomenon  of  considerable  psychological 
interest,  accompanying  the  inefficacy  of  prohibition,  is  the 
prevalence  of  so-called  "temperance  drinks"  in  "dry"  territory. 
These  include  a  great  variety  of  -sarsaparillas,  stomach  bitters, 
resolvents  and  tonics.  One  of 'them,  named  an  "Arabian  Tonic," 
is  labeled  invitingly,  ^not  a  rum  drink,"  although  on  analysis  it 
is  found  to  contain  over  thirteen  per  cent  of  alcohol.  Another, 
with  the  luring  caption  of  "Seaweed  Tonic,"  and  described  as 
"entirely  harmless,"  contains  nearly  twenty  per  cent  of  spirits. 
By  chemical  analysis  Ayer's  Sarsaparilla  is  known  to  contain  26.2 
per  cent  of  alcohol  and  Hartman's  Peruna  a  great  deal  more,  and 
nevertheless  both  have  an  enormous  sale.  Some  of  the  bitters 
preparations,  sold  over  the  drug  counters,  are  fortified  by  as 
much  as  fifty  per  cent  of  high  wine.  Calisaya,  a  preparation  of 
Peruvian  bark  with  a  large  percentage  of  alcohol,  is  a  popular 
substitute  for  whisky,  and  responsible  for  many  a  "jag."  All 
these  alcoholic  stimulants  are  advertised  as  medicine.  The  dose 
prescribed  on  the  labels  of  the  bottles  varies  from  a  teaspoonful 
to  a  wineglass ful,  and  the  frequency,  from  one  to  four  times  a 
day,  "increased  as  needed."  There  is  no  necessity  of  explaining 
that  needs  are  easily  multiplied  when  they  are  determined  by 
the  desires  of  an  individual  hankering  after  alcohol,  and  that  one 
may  become  intoxicated  and  a  confirmed  drunkard  in  prohibition 
States,  even  though  there  were  not  a  drop  of  beer,  wine  or  whisky 
on  sale. 

In  Southern  States  the  use  of  cocaine  has  spread  alarmingly 
among  the  negro  population,  and  is  fast  becoming  familiar  to  the 
whites,  wherever  prohibition  is  rigidly  enforced.  Drug  fiends, 
of  all  manner  of  description,  have  become  as  numerous  as  drunk- 
ards among  the  poorer  classes,  who  can  not  afford  to  have  their 
intoxicating  drinks  sent  to  them  by  express,  or  to  take  them  in  a 
fashionable  clubhouse. 


88  PROHIBITION  — •  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

Right  Rev.  H.  C.  Brant,  Episcopal  Bishop  of  Manila,  makes 
the  following  startling  statement  apropos  of  this  subject: 

"In  the  Southern  States,  where  prohibition  has  almost  be- 
come universal,  the  increase  in  the  sale  of  drugs  per  capita  is 
greater  than  the  increase  in  population. 

"The  use  of  opium,  cocaine  and  other  such  drugs  is,  I  regret 
to  say,  largely  on  the  increase  all  over  the  United  States,  especially 
in  localities  where  the  sale  of  liquor  is  prohibited. 

"The  pure  food  laws  have  done  good  work  regarding  the  sale 
of  patent  medicines,  but  the  drug  store  has  taken  the  place  of  the 
saloon  in  many  of  our  cities  where  the  sale  of  liquor  is  not 
permitted." 

Dr.  H.  P.  Bowditch,  of  Boston,  who  investigated  the  sub- 
ject of  "temperance  drinks"  in  the  Eastern  States,  summarizes 
the  results  of  his  researches  as  follows:  "It  is  clear  that  very 
large  quantities  of  drinks  containing  a  greater  percentage  of  alco- 
hol than  the  ordinary  wines  and  beers  are  consumed  among  the 
most  rigorous  of  total  abstinence  circles" 


xxxvn. 

PROHIBITION  AND  THE  PUBLIC 
SCHOOLS 

IN  SPITE  of  the  failures  of  prohibition  and  the  unreasonable- 
ness of  its  moral  foundation,  its  advocates  have  vigorously 
forwarded  and  assiduously  urged  its  propagation  in  the  public 
schools  of  the  United  States.  This  was  done  with  the  object  of 
teaching  the  children,  on  an  alleged  scientific  basis,  the  absolute, 
uncompromising  necessity  of  total  abstinence.  The  protests  of 
many  millions  of  law-abiding  citizens,  holding  contrary  views, 
among  them  scientists  and  physiologists,  were  of  no  avail,  even 
though  some  of  the  latter  were  bold  enough  to  say  that  the  mat- 
ter might  well  be  considered  a  blot  on  the  intelligence  of  the 
Nation.  The  force  of  the  objection  is  that  while  it  is  advisable 
to  explain  to  children  the  nature  and  effects  of  alcohol,  its  dangers 
and  abuses,  there  can  be  no  excuse  for  teaching  that  the  strictly 
moderate  or  occasional  use  of  alcoholic  liquors  is  vile,  abominable 
and  injurious  to  health.  It  should  not  be  taught  that  the  drink- 
ing of  one  or  two  glasses  of  beer  or  wine,  or  a  moderate  dose  of 
well-diluted  whisky,  is  harmful,  for  it  is  not.  Practically  all 
physiologists  agree  that  it  is  not. 

The  unscientific  bias  of  the  school  physiologies  in  present 
use  is  easily  detected.  For  instance,  in  one  of  the  physiologies 
of  the  "Path-finder  Series"  we  meet  the  following  sentence :  "This 
alcohol  is  a  liquid  poison,  a  little  of  it  will  harm  anyone  who 
drinks  it,  and  much  of  it  will  kill  the  drinker." 

The  Standard  text-books,  on  the  contrary,  endorsed  by  phys- 
iologists, present  the  following  view  of  the  same  subject:  "Suf- 
fice it  to  state  as  obvious  inferences  from  our  present  knowledge 
of  the  physiological  action  of  alcohol  that  the  habitual  use  of  a 
moderate  amount  of  alcohol  does  not  directly,  and  of  necessity 
do  harm ;  that  to  a  certain  extent  it  is  capable  of  replacing  ordi- 
nary food,  so  that,  if  it  be  scanty,  or  even  if  it  be  coarse  and  not 
easily  digested,  alcohol  in  some  form  or  other,  is  of  good  advan- 
tage; that  in  all  cases  it  should  be  taken  well  diluted,  so  as  not 


90  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

to  irritate  the  stomach,  and  that  wine  or  malt  liquors  are  certainly 
preferable  to  spirits." 

Again,  the  Eclectic  School  Physiology  says :  "To  attempt 
to  drink  fermented  liquors  moderately  has  led  to  the  hopeless 
ruin  of  untold  thousands,"  while  Dr.  William  H.  Welch,  of  Johns 
Hopkins  University,  a  physiological  authority,  writes :  "It  is  a 
matter  of  common  experience  that  many  persons  drink  beer,  wine 
and  spirits  in  moderation  throughout  a  long  life  without  apparent 
impairment  of  the  general  health."  The  Eclectic  Physiology 
continues :  "Alcohol  is  not  a  food  or  drink.  Medical  writers 
without  exception  class  alcohol  as  a  poison,"  a  radically  different 
conception  from  that  expressed  by  the  Standard  text-book,  used 
in  medical  schools :  "In  practice  we  find  that  in  many  persons  a 
small  quantity  of  alcohol  improves  digestion ;  and  that  a  meal 
by  its  means  can  be  digested  which  would  be  wasted." 

The  "Scientific  Temperance  Text-Books"  were  prepared  for 
the  public  schools  under  the  auspices  of  the  Woman's  Christian 
Temperance  Union,  principally  as  the  result  of  an  agitation  by 
its  members  in  favor  of  prohibition.  The  animus  in  their  prepa- 
ration is  sufficiently  explained  by  the  following  statement  in  one 
of  the  "W.  C.  T.  U."  publications:  "This  is  not  a  physiological 
but  a  temperance  movement."  The  insincerity  and  palpable 
prejudices  in  these  books  are  recognized  in  the  fulsome  encomi- 
ums which  are  bestowed  upon  authors  favoring  the  views  to  be 
inculcated,  such  as  "greatest  living  authority,"  "foremost  scien- 
tist," "the  wise  physician  of  today,  who  is  abreast  of  the  modern 
investigations  concerning  this  drug,"  "author  of  great  promi- 
nence," "most  skilled  in  his  profession,"  "eminent  scholar,"  where- 
as, say  Dr.  H.  P.  Bowditch  and  Dr.  C  F.  Hodge  in  their  report 
to  the  Committee  of  Fifty,  "these  phrases  are  rarely,  if  ever, 
applied  to  persons  who  are  recognized  by  men  of  science  as 
authorities  on  the  question."  Everything  that  happens  to  agree 
with  the  prejudices  of  prohibitionists  is  called  "scientific,"  and 
the  strongest  evidence  of  the  other  side,  though  it  came  from 
physiologists  of  the  highest  standing,  is  cast  aside  into  the  rub- 
bish pile.  How  far  these  text-books  verify  the  claim  made  for 
them  that  they  are  "abreast  with  the  latest  teachings  of  science" 
may  be  gathered  from  a  single  example  in  Steele's  "Hygienic 


PROHIBITION  AND  THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  91 

Physiology"  (No.  3  of  the  "Pathfinder  Series"),  in  which  (pp. 
177-179)  there  was  a  clear  statement  of  the  doctrine  that  alcohol 
is  eliminated,  entirely  unchanged,  although  this  is  unquestionably 
contradicted  by  the  latest  investigations.1 

Dishonesty  in  the  whole  machinery  of  preparing  this  physio- 
logical course  was  so  pronounced  that  Dr.  Jordan  wrote:  "In- 
deed they  have  the  effrontery  to  demand  of  a  scientific  author  in 
treating  a  certain  scientific  subject  in  the  school  courses  that  he 
shall  introduce  only  so  much  of  the  subject  as  shall  bear  on  a 
certain  reform  that  they  are  advocating." 

One  of  the  authors  of  an  approved  series  of  text-books  said 
to  a  member  of  the  Committee  of  Fifty :  "I  have  studied  physi- 
ology, and  I  do  not  wish  you  to  suppose  that  I  have  fallen  so 
low  as  to  believe  all  of  the  things  /  have  to  put  into  these  books;" 
and,  "it  must  be  generally  admitted  that  there  can  not  be  one 
truth  for  elementary  schools,  and  truth  exactly  contradicting  it 
for  colleges  and  medical  schools.  There  is  but  one  science  of 
physiology."  Prof.  Theodore  Hough,  of  Boston,  speaks  of  these 
text-books  as  follows :  "I  have  examined  many  of  the  'approved 
and  indorsed'  physiologies,  and  I  have  always  ceased  their  pe- 
rusal with  feelings  of  pity  for  the  conscientious  teacher,  who  is 
dependent  upon  them  for  information  as  to  the  physiological  side 
of  the  problem."  Prof.  Henry  Sewall,  of  Denver,  Col.,  says : 
"In  these  works  the  truth,  or  what  there  is  of  truth,  is  presented 
with  such  partiality  for  total  abstinence,  with  such  magnification 
of  the  evils  of  any  indulgence,  so  little  discrimination  between 
the  effects  of  stimulants  and  narcotics  employed  in  therapeutic 
and  poisonous  doses,  that  the  idea  given  the  pupil  is  necessarily 
deliberately  false.  I  seriously  believe  that  more  evil  will  prob- 
ably accrue  to  the  next  generation  through  this  legalising  of  lies 
than  would  result  without  direct  effort  for  moral  teaching." 

Of  thirteen  physiologists  of  note  in  Europe,  who  examined 
these  text-books,  only  one  was  found,  Dr.  Baer,  a  physician  in  a 
penitentiary  near  Berlin,  who  was  willing  to  endorse  them,  and 
even  this  solitary  advocate  wrote :  "Personally,  I  do  not  practice 
total  abstinence."  But  as  a  reward  of  his  lone  endorsement  he 
was  hailed  "the  foremost  European  specialist  on  the  subject/' 

I  __  Physiological  Aspects  of  the  Liquor  Problem,  Vol.  I,  page  27. 


92  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

Professor  Bowditch  and  Dr.  Hodge,  in  their  report  to  the 
Committee  of  Fifty,  arrive  at  the  following  conclusion:  "It  is 
thus  apparent  that  under  the  name  of  'scientific  temperance  in- 
struction' there  has  been  grafted  upon  the  public  school  system 
of  nearly  all  our  States  an  educational  scheme  relating  to  alcohol, 
which  is  neither  scientific,  nor  temperate,  nor  instructive.  Failing 
to  observe  the  distinction  between  the  diametrically  opposite  con- 
ceptions of  'use'  and  'abuse,'  some  of  its  advocates  have  not 
hesitated  to  teach  our  children  that  the  terrible  results  of  a  pro- 
longed abuse  of  alcohol  may  be  expected  to  follow  any  departure 
from  the  strict  rules  of  abstinence."  Not  only  in  books,  but  by 
charts  do  they  teach  children  that  the  evils  of  a  continued  exces- 
sive use  of  alcoholics  are  shared  by  the  strictly  moderate  drinker, 
both  in  regard  to  deficiency  in  the  offspring  and  general  hereditary 
influence.  The  only  excuse  there  can  be  for  such  a  perversion  of 
the  truth  is  that  there  may  be  some,  claiming  to  be  moderate,  who 
are  in  reality  immoderate  drinkers ;  and  yet  this  should  not  up- 
set the  evidence  that  there  are  many  more  in  the  strictly  moderate 
drinking  class  —  the  great  majority  of  them  —  who  escape  all 
undesirable  consequences. 


XXXVIII. 

THE  ARMY  CANTEEN 

ALTHOUGH  there  is  convincing  testimony  that  the  aboli- 
tion of  the  army  canteen  promotes  intemperance  among 
the  United  States  troops  and  among  the  inmates  of  soldiers' 
homes,  nothing  has  so  far  been  done  by  Congress  towards  its 
restoration.  General  Corbin,  in  his  annual  report  (1906)  on 
the  state  of  the  army,  says: 

"I  desire  to  recommend  once  more  in  the  interest  of  the 
moral  welfare  and  discipline  of  the  troops,  the  removal,  if  prac- 
ticable, of  the  legislative  prohibition  against  the  sale  of  beer  and 
light  wines  in  the  post  exchanges.  It  would  seem  unnecessary 
to  argue  to  a  fair-minded  person  the  superiority  of  a  system  which 
provides  a  mild  alcoholic  beverage  at  reasonable  cost  in  moderate 
quantities  under  strict  military  control,  to  one  which  results  in 
luring  the  soldier  away  from  his  barrack  to  neighboring  dives 
where  his  body  and  soul  are  poisoned  and  ruined  by  vile  liquors, 
with  the  accompanying  vice  of  harlotry,  and  where  his  money  is 
taken  from  him  by  gamblers  and  thieves.  Unauthorized  absences 
and  frequent  desertions  directly  traceable  to  visits  to  these  dens 
of  iniquity  form  a  large  percentage  of  the  cases  of  trial  by  the 
several  'military  courts,  the  number  of  which  is  a  blot  upon  the 
otherwise  fair  record  of  our  army." 

A  different  state  of  affairs  is  noted  in  the  English  army. 
John  S.  Steele,  describing  in  the  New  York  Press  the  great  Eng- 
lish military  station  at  Aldershot,  presents  the  following  picture 
of  its  social  privileges : 

"Another  reason  for  the  excellent  health  of  the  men  is  prob- 
ably the  fact  that  there  is  not  a  public  liquor  saloon  in  the  camp. 
Each  regiment  has  its  canteen,  of  course,  but  very  little  spirits  is 
sold.  Beer  is  the  article  chiefly  consumed  and  the  canteen  keep- 
er must  keep  a  strict  watch  on  his  customers.  Any  tendency  to 
excess  is  at  once  checked,  for  if  any  disorder  takes  place  in  the 
canteen  both  the  keeper  and  the  disturber  are  severely  dealt 


94  PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

with.  Attached  to  each  canteen  is  a  small  vaudeville  theater 
where  free  performances  are  given  every  night  for  the  -men. 
There  are  about  forty  such  music  halls  in  the  camp  and  the 
artists,  who  go  from  one  to  another,  are  paid  from  the  profits  of 
the  canteen/' 

Is  there  any  possibility  of  convincing  the  W.  C.  T.  U.  and 
members  of  Congress,  whose  votes  they  control,  of  their  duty  in 
this  matter,  which  so  seriously  affects  the  welfare  of  Uncle  Sam's 
soldiers  ? 


XXXIX 

PRO  BONO  PUBLICO 

IF  PROHIBITION  were  reasonably  operative  there  might  be 
some  reason  for  the  claim  that  it  is  "Pro  Bono  Publico" — 
"For  the  Public  Good" — but  since  it  is  not,  and  is  almost  every- 
where an  open  page  of  failure  without  any  likelihood  of  ever 
being  a  success,  it  is  difficult  to  understand  why  an  argument,  so 
unprofitable  to  its  purpose,  should  have  been  brought  forward. 
Besides,  what  is  "for  the  public  good?"  Does  it  mean  the  will 
of  the  majority  without  regard  to  the  rights  of  the  minority? 
If  so,  the  substitution  of  a  license  or  tax  law  for  prohibition  in 
fifteen  Northern  States,  which  is  a  matter  of  history,  was  "for 
the  public  good."  Prohibition  and  local  option  advocates  are  as 
variable  on  this  point  as  a  weather  vane  —  it  all  depends  upon 
which  way  the  wind  blows.  Whenever  a  State  or  county  carries 
prohibition  the  result  is  proclaimed  as  unquestionably  "for  the 
public  good ;"  but  if  at  a  subsequent  election  it  should  reverse  its 
vote  in  favor  of  a  license  law,  the  change  is  not  regarded  as 
being  "for  the  public  good"  at  all,  but  rather  a  triumph  of  the 
lawless  and  undesirable  populace,  and  a  victory  for  the  brewer, 
distiller  and  wine  grower.  Not  once  is  the  thought  entertained 
that  the  change  to  a  license  law  was  brought  about  by  the  moder- 
ate drinker,  who  insists  upon  enjoying  his  natural  right,  particu- 
larly in  view  of  the  fact  that  prohibition  has  proved  itself  every- 
where a  failure  with  regard  to  lessening  the  evils  of  intemper- 
ance. Not  only  is  prohibition  inoperative,  but,  as  some  of  the 
judges  in  prohibition  States  put  it,  it  fosters  new  vices  and  crimes, 
and  breeds  "a  universal  contempt  of  the  law."  It  does  all  this 
although  it  eliminttes  saloons,  breweries  and  distilleries.  Where 
does  the  pro  bono  publico  argument  come  in  to  justify  suspension 
of  the  rights  of  Christian  or  personal  liberty? 


XL. 

AN  ANSWER  TO  A  SPECIOUS 
ARGUMENT 

A  VERY  familiar  argument  of  prohibitionists  is  that  liquor 
producers  would  not  agitate  so  strenuously  against  pro- 
hibition if  its  laws  were  inoperative.  But  plausible  as  this  plea 
may  appear,  it  lacks  substance  and  is  easily  picked  to  pieces.  The 
liquor  industries  do  not  deny  that  prohibition  seriously  handicaps, 
and  in  the  event  of  its  greater  spread  would  materially  diminish 
the  volume  of  their  business.  Mail-order  liquor  houses,  it  is  true, 
have  profited  by  prohibition  territory  where  individual  homes  are 
substituting  the  traffic  of  the  defunct  saloon,  and  from  this  direc- 
tion at  least  the  distiller  has  increased  his  output ;  but  the  brewer, 
on  account  of  the  greater  bulk  of  his  product  and  cost  of  shipping 
it,  is  at  a  disadvantage.  As  a  result  the  consumption  of 
the  stronger  alcoholic  liquors,  such  as  whisky  and  brandy,  is  on 
the  increase  in  prohibition  States  at  the  expense  of  the  lighter 
drinks.  That  always  means  an  increase  in  the  volume  of  visible 
intoxication,  as  statistics  show.  Then,  too,  prohibition  means 
the  multiplication  of  drug  stores  which  take  the  place  of  the 
saloon,  and,  in  addition  to  an  illicit  selling  of  intoxicants,  cater 
to  the  growing  demand  for  alcoholic  drugs.  It  also  means  a 
rampant  illegal  traffic,  dispensing  the  vilest  concoctions  that  were 
never  inside  the  walls  of  a  brewery  or  distillery.  It  should  not, 
therefore,  be  very  difficult  to  reconcile  the  protests  of  the  liquor 
traffic  against  prohibition  with  the  claim  that  it  is  worse  than 
inoperative. 


XLI. 
PROHIBITION'S  NUMERICAL  STRENGTH 

THE  numerical  strength  of  prohibition  is  much  less  than  is 
indicated  by  the  political  vote.  State-wide  prohibition  does 
not  mean  that  a  majority  of  its  advocates  are  in  favor  of  depriv- 
ing themselves  of  the  right  or  opportunity  of  drinking  alcoholic 
liquors.  It  is  not  exaggeration  to  say  that  fully  two-thirds  of 
those  who  vote  in  favor  of  prohibition,  whether  for  a  county  or 
State,  do  so  in  order  to  rid  themselves  of  the  objectionable  "dive" 
or  saloon  with  a  full  realization  that  their  drinking  privileges  will 
riot  be  curtailed  thereby,  so  long  as  the  Interstate  Commerce  Law 
permits  express  companies  and  other  common  carriers  to  ship 
liquors  to  their  homes  and  their  clubhouses.  But  let  Congress 
amend  the  Interstate  Law,  making  it  illegal  to  transport  liquors 
to  be  used  as  beverages,  into  any  prohibition  State  or  county, 
and  you  will  not  have  to  wait  long  for  an  exposure  of  the  true 
situation.  It  is  not  at  all  likely  that  the  strictly  moderate  drink- 
ers, hitherto  allied  to  prohibition  in  order  to  punish  the  saloon,  will 
continue  their  allegiance,  if  by  so  doing  they  will  deprive  them- 
selves of  the  exercise  of  their  natural  right.  On  the  contrary, 
it  may  be  taken  for  granted  that. at  the  earliest  possible  moment 
they  will  turn  about  and  regain  the  enjoyment  of  their  personal 
liberty  by  assisting  in  the  repeal  of  prohibitory  laws. 

There  is  no  surer  way  of  having  prohibition  defeated  eventu- 
ally than  in  having  it  strictly  enforced  by  an  amendment  to  the 
Interstate  Commerce  Law.  In  confirmation  of  this  claim  there 
is  every  reason  to  believe  that  the  proportion  of  total  abstainers 
in  the  United  States,  estimated  by  the  Committee  of  Fifty  in  its 
published  report  of  1903  as  being  not  more  than  twenty  per  cent 
of  the  entire  male  population,  has  not  appreciably  increased,  nor 
need  the  figures  of  that  Committee  be  materially  changed  in  com- 
puting that  seventy-five  per  cent  belong  in  the  class  of  occasional 
or  moderate  drinkers.  The  moderate  drinker  after  all  hojds  the 
key  to  the  situation,  and  he  will  assert  himself  at  the  proper  time. 
The  best  test  of  prohibition's  numerical  strength  would  be  the 
enactment  of  a  law,  subjecting  to  fine  or  imprisonment,  or  both, 
not  only  the  maker  and  seller  of  alcoholic  liquors,  but  the  drinker 
as  well.  How  the  army  of  prohibitionists  would  dwindle ! 


XLII. 

PROHIBITION  AND  ABOLITION 

IT  IS  the  boast  of  prohibitionists  that  at  some  day  all  use  of 
alcoholic  liquors,  moderate  or  immoderate,  will  be  suppressed 
in  this  country,  as  was  slavery.     But  that  day  is  likely  never  to 
dawn.     They  reason  from  false  premises,  and,  therefore,  reach  a 
wrong  conclusion. 

From  the  moral  point  of  view  the  crime  of  slavery  and  a 
moderate  use  of  drink  can  not  be  compared.  There  is  no  con- 
gruity  whatever  between  the  two  subjects.  The  standards  of 
abolition  and  prohibition  are  just  as  incongruous.  One  was 
essentially  right;  the  other  is  essentially  wrong.  One  restored 
the  slave  to  enjoyment  of  human  liberty;  the  other  seeks  to  de- 
prive man  of  what  belongs  to  him  by  Nature's  law  —  to  drink 
moderately  whatever  he  pleases.  One  returned  to  the  slave  the 
free  exercise  of  his  will,  releasing  him  from  the  necessity  of 
bowing  down  to  the  arbitrary  commands  of  a  master;  the  other 
would  enslave  the  will  of  man  to  observance  of  an  abstinence, 
enjoined  neither  by  natural  nor  positive  divine  law.  One  set 
free  several  millions  of  the  black  race;  the  other  would  put  in 
bondage  many  millions  of  all  races,  by  dictating  to  them  what  they 
ought  and  ought  not  to  drink,  and  making  impossible  for  them  a 
voluntary  Christian  temperance,  that  has  been  blessed  and  approv- 
ed by  Almighty  God.  Slavery  put  fetters  on  the  body;  prohibi- 
tion would  put  in  bondage  the  soul,  depriving  it  of  the  exercise  of 
its  noblest  faculty,  and  doing  this  without  any  evidence  of  divine 
law  or  sanction.  Total  abstinence  under  prohibition  rule  would 
be  the  enforced  condition  of  a  slave,  the  barren  result  of  a  legal 
necessity. 


XLIII. 

PROHIBITION  A  MENACE 

WHATEVER  may  be  the  good  motives  of  the  advocates  of 
prohibition,  its  propagation  can  only  be  considered  a  men- 
ace to  the  Nation.  By  the  very  nature  of  things  it  is  not  only  in- 
operative, but  it  tends  to  breed  the  worst  social  conditions.  Speak- 
ing with  reference  to  this  subject,  one  of  the  judges  in  Maine 
declared :  "The  value  of  the  oath  has  been  reduced  fifty  per 
cent  in  this  State.  Perjury  (for  which  the  maximum  penalty  is 
imprisonment  for  life)  is  so  common  that  it  no  longer  attracts 
attention.  And  it  is  not  confined  only  to  the  liquor  element ;  the 
effect  of  it  is  far-reaching  and  growing.  People  talk  of  it  — 
openly  without  a  blush."1  What  with  bribery  and  corruption  of 
officials,  their  continual  connivance  at  the  same  offenses,  com- 
mitted day  by  day  and  year  by  year,  and  with  public  apathy  to- 
wards the  enforcement  of  statutes,  is  it  any  wonder  that  there 
should  be  bred  among  the  people  in  prohibition  States  a  general 
disregard  of  the  law? 

Calamitous,  therefore,  as  the  ravages  of  the  abuse  of  strong 
drink  are,  and  how  much  soever  it  may  devolve  upon  the  Gov- 
ernment to  check  and  control  them,  it  is  better  by  far  that  evils 
which  can  not  be  exterminated,  so  long  as  this  world  shall  exist, 
should  be  restricted  and  regulated  by  law,  than  that  a  compul- 
sory measure  should  prove  a  failure,  invite  new  social  vices  and 
public  burdens,  and  disregard  the  strictly  moderate  drinker  in  the 
exercise  of  his  natural  right.  If  such  a  right  can  be  set  aside 
under  the  protest  that  its  elimination  is  "for  the  public  good," 
where  in  the  end  will  be  the  guarantee  of  equal  rights  to  all  under 
a  free  government?  To  the  Roman  Catholic,  the  Episcopalian, 
the  German  Lutheran,  the  Free  Evangelical  Protestant,  the  ex- 
ercise of  Christian  liberty  is  an  indispensable  part  of  his  religion. 
Does  not  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  provide  in  article 
first  of  the  amendments  that  no  law  shall  be  made  "prohibiting 
the  free  exercise  thereof?" 

1 — The  Liquor  Problem  —  Legislative  Aspects  —  Committee  of  Fifty. 


XLIV. 

LOCAL  OPTION,  THE  ALLY  OF 
PROHIBITION 

T  OCAL  option  is  the  ally  of  prohibition.  It  is  prohibition  for 
j  townships,  municipalities  and  counties.  Its  ultimate  aim 
is  State-wide  and  National  prohibition.  The  Anti-Saloon  League 
of  Kentucky  made  this  very  clear  in  the  following  recent  declara- 
tion :  "We  would  hail  the  dawn  of  such  a  day  when  a  prohibition 
law  might  be  enacted,  and  to  that  end  we  are  constantly  at  work, 
and  that  we  shall  surely  attain;"  and  Superintendent  Wm.  H. 
Anderson  explains  this  affiliation  in  a  statement  of  the  American 
Issue:  "If  local  option  is  good  enough  to  be  called  prohibition 
when  it  reaches  the  victory  stage,  it  is  entitled  to  recognition  as 
local  prohibition  in  the  preliminary  stages." 

But  while  local  option  is  identical  with  prohibition  in  its  aims 
and  final  results,  it  is  not  so  in  its  principles  and  methods.  Pro- 
hibition leaders  vigorously  attack  the  local  option  standard  of  a 
majority  rule,  as  the  following  authoritative  explanation  will 
suffice  to  show:  "Local  option's  practical  lesson  is  to  go  with 
the  multitude,  even  to  do  evil.  Local  option's  moral  standard  is 
the  will  of  the  majority,  one  of  the  fatal  deductions  from  a 
democracy.  It  assumes  the  prerogative  to  make  wrong  into 
right  by  investing  it  with  all  the  sanctity  of  law."1  The  pro- 
hibitionist takes  the  suppression  of  the  liquor  traffic  as  an  im- 
perative Christian  duty,  independent  of  the  State's  authority ; 
the  local  optionist  on  the  other  hand,  while  individually  he  may 
from  the  Christian  point  of  view  hold  the  same  convictions, 
leaves  the  question  entirely  to  the  vote  of  the  commonwealth. 
To  the  prohibitionist,  prohibition  is  part  of  the  decalogue;  to 
the  local  optionist,  it  is  a  political  measure  pro  bono  publico. 

The  insincerity  of  local  option  is  most  apparent  in  claiming 
not  to  interfere  with  the  private  use  of  alcoholic  liquors,  while 
in  fact  its  efforts  are  not  only  directed  to  suppressing  their  manu- 


1  —  Cyclopedia  of  Temperance  and  Prohibition,  pages  394  and  395.     Funk 
&  Wagnalls. 


LOCAL  OPTION,  THE  ALLY  OF  PROHIBITION  101 

facture  and  sale,  but  preventing  their  shipment  to  individual 
homes.  Its  leaders  are  persistent  in  urging  Congress  to  amend 
the  Interstate  Commerce  Law  so  that  the  shipment  of  liquors 
into  "dry"  territory  shall  be  absolutely  prohibited.  And  never- 
theless they  succeed  in  hoodwinking  many  by  their  protestation 
that  they  are  opposing  the  saloon  without  interfering  with  the 
private  rights  of  the  strictly  moderate  drinker.  A  sample  of  this 
duplicity  is  found  in  the  following  extract  from  an  editorial  in 
The  American  Issue:  "We  have  repeatedly  pointed  out  that  in 
the  sense  of  prohibiting  the  private  use  of  intoxicating  drinks, 
prohibition  does  not  obtain  in  nor  is  it  attempted  in  the  United 
States."  They  would  dry  up  the  springs  first  and  then  politely 
ask  a  man  to  take  a  drink  from  the  fountain !  Is  not  this  adding 
insult  and  ridicule  to  injury? 

The  success  of  local  option  is  chiefly  owing  to  the  effect  of 
this  prevarication,  and  also  to  the  assistance  of  the  moderate 
drinker  who,  enjoying  his  glass  by  grace  of  interstate  commerce, 
is  willing  to  vote  for  prohibition  in  the  interest  of  law  and  order. 

If  the  sole  object  of  the  Anti-Saloon  League  were  the  sup- 
pression of  the  vile  saloon  there  would  be  no  division  of  opinion 
ac  to  its  eminent  usefulness,  but  inasmuch  as  it  uses  the  saloon 
merely  as  a  foil  for  the  ulterior  purpose  of  eliminating  the  manu- 
facture and  sale  of  alcoholic  liquors,  without  respect  to  their 
strictly  moderate  use,  it  is  double  dealing,  and  unworthy  of  the 
support  of  a  free,  American  people. 


XLV. 

THE  LICENSE  SYSTEM 

PROHIBITION  means  well,  but  it  accomplishes  little  or 
nothing.  The  reason  is  because  it  is  built  upon  a  false 
foundation  and  starts  from  wrong  principles.  You  may  forbid 
a  wrong  by  enactment  of  law,  but  you  can  not  forbid  a  right. 
You  may  forbid  drunkenness  under  penalties,  as  you  may  any 
other  offense  or  crime,  but  you  can  not  forbid  the  moderate  or 
occasional  use  of  alcoholic  drink  without  violating  Nature's  law 
and  God's  positive  law,  as  contained  in  the  Scriptures  —  the  right 
of  Christian  or  personal  liberty.  You  may  say  that  it  can  be 
done,  for  it  has  been  and  is  being  done.  That  is  true,  but  it  has 
been  done  by  legislation,  without  results  "for  the  public  good" 
claimed  for  it,  and  at  the  expense  of  the  individual's  rights. 
Whenever  prohibition  has  been  enacted  into  law  it  is  but  a  tem- 
porary victory  —  largely  the  outcome  of  political  intrigue  or 
combinations.  It  may  sometimes  owe  its  success  to  an  outburst 
of  popular  indignation  against  flagrant  abuses  in  the  liquor  traffic, 
and  in  the  main  this  feeling  needs  no  apology ;  but  nevertheless 
its  expression  is  exaggerated  and  indiscriminating,  and  its  force 
spent  in  a  hopelessly  unprofitable  direction.  Just  as  soon  as 
the  liquor  traffic  shall  have  been  raised  to  a  higher  plane  of 
respectability  and  regard  for  the  law,  it  will  invite  less  opposition 
and  criticism  from  all  classes  of  citizens  and  encourage  a  saner 
public  sense  of  a  great  social  and  moral  problem.  Nothing  can 
contribute  more  to  such  a  desideratum  than  a  strict  license  law. 
Among  many  legislators,  economists,  moralists,  divines,  edu- 
cators and  practical  men  of  this  country,  the  conviction  is  gather- 
ing more  and  more  force  that  a  license  system  is  the  best  and 
most  honest  solution  of  the  liquor  problem.  It  is  the  best,  be- 
cause it  accomplishes  the  most  for  temperance,  and  the  most 
honest  because  it  offers  the  least  inducement  or  motive  to  defraud 
or  transgress  the  laws.  Besides,  the  license  system  legitimizes  a 
dangerous  business,  as  far  as  this  can  be  done,  and  in  considera- 
tion of  its  decent  management,  and  by  putting  it  in  a  more  re- 


THE  LICENSE  SYSTEM  103 

spectable  class,  is  itself  the  best  guarantee  that  restrictive  laws 
regarding  minors,  drunkards,  closing  hours  and  objectionable 
features  will  be  more  rigidly  observed.  It  brings  into  the  saloon 
business  a  better  grade  of  men,  and  this,  too,  insures  a  more 
reliable  respect  and  readiness  for  the  observance  of  law.  The 
high-license  system  has  prevailed  in  Pennsylvania  since  the 
Brooks  Law  was  passed  in  1888,  and  it  has  by  no  means  an  unen- 
viable record  for  restricting  the  evils  of  the  liquor  traffic  in  that 
State.  "The  license  became  a  valuable  franchise  not  to  be 
jeopardized  by  gross  violations  of  the  law.  Applications  for 
licenses  are  acted  upon  in  open  court,  and  the  judges  are  required 
to  receive  petitions  for  and  remonstrances  against  the  applica- 
tions. Every  application  for  a  license  must  be  accompanied  by 
a  certificate,  signed  by  at  least  twelve  respectable  electors  of  the 
wards,  boroughs  or  townships,  indorsing  the  applicant,  and  pray- 
ing that  the  license  be  issued."1  In  this  way  the  privilege  of  the 
traffic  is  safeguarded  as  far  as  possible.  The  law,  too,  is  ex- 
plicit on  the  subject  that  the  number  of  licenses  must  be  con- 
ditioned by  "public  necessity,"  and  no  new  applications  are  taken 
up  until  this  point  has  been  settled.  They  can  be  revoked  at  any 
time  for  cause  by  the  judges,  and  the  licensee,  by  violating  any  of 
the  liquor  laws,  may  become  forever  barred  from  obtaining  a  new 
privilege  in  any  part  of  the  commonwealth.  Under  this  system, 
as  statistics  will  show,  the  ratio  of  arrests  for  drunkenness 
throughout  the  State  has  steadily  decreased.  The  best  evidence 
of  a  law-abiding  spirit  among  the  licensed  dealers  in  Philadelphia, 
for  instance,  are  the  statistics  of  Sunday  arrests,  which  show  a 
falling  off  from  2,101  in  1886-87,  and  1,263  in  1887-88  to  628 
in  1892-93,  and  to  541  in  1893-94. 

Summing  up  the  results  of  high  license  in  that  city,  Mr. 
John  Koren,  of  Boston,  says  in  his  report  to  the  Committee  of 
Fifty:  "In  consequence  of  the  valuable  franchise,  regardless  of 
its  cost,  which  the  liquor  license  has  become,  the  tone  of  the 
whole  trade  has  been  raised.  The  improved  character  of  the 
saloon  is  remarked  upon  by  all  observant  citizens.  Sunday  sell- 
ing has  ceased,  and  minors  are  usually  kept  out  of  the  saloons. 


1  —  The  Liquor  Problem  in  Its  Legislative  Aspects  —  The  Committee  of 
Fifty. 


104  PROHIBITION  — •  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

The  wholesale  dealers  have  stopped  selling  liquor  to  be  consumed 
en  their  premises.  In  many  places  great  care  is  taken  not  to 
sell  to  persons  already  under  the  influence  of  liquor." 

At  a  recent  session  of  the  Maryland  Legislature  a  high- 
license  law  was  passed,  and  is  now  in  force.  It  is  in  operation 
in  several  States  and  it  is  giving  satisfactory  results  by  lessening 
the  number  of  saloons,  eliminating  licentious  adjuncts,  encourag- 
ing respect  for  the  law,  lowering  the  record  for  arrests  for  drunk- 
enness and  providing  a  large  amount  of  revenue,  in  compensation 
for  public  expenditures,  caused  by  alcoholic  abuse 

An  example  of  how  admirably  license  operates  in  regulating 
the  liquor  traffic  and  minimizing  its  evils  has  already  been  cited 
in  the  city  of  Milwaukee  which,  according  to  the  United  States 
Census  Report,  recorded  in  1905  only  905.6  arrests  for  drunken- 
ness for  10,000  of  population,  while  Portland,  Maine,  reported 
in  the  same  ratio  2,806.9  arrests;  Kansas  City,  Kan.,  1,970  ar- 
rests, and  Wichita,  Kan,  4,381.2  arrests.  Could  any  stronger 
proofs  be  presented  than  these  figures  that  license  is  more  favor- 
able to  temperance  than  prohibition? 


XLVI. 

ITS  MORAL  SUPPORT 

E CENSE  is  not,  as  prohibitionists  claim,  the  legalizing  of 
evil  —  it  is  the  legalizing  of  a  traffic,  legitimate  per  se,  and 
possibly  productive  of  good,  under  such  severe  conditions  as  will 
restrict  and  regulate  the  sale  of  liquors  and  reduce  to  a  minimum 
the  dangers  of  alcoholic  abuse. 

The  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  and  her  temperance  society 
are  practically  committed  to  license,  the  society  being  one  of  its 
most  active  promoters.  The  Roman  Catholic  Church,  too,  while 
not  declaring  itself  officially,  is  accredited  with  favoring  the  high- 
license  system.  Cardinal  Gibbons,  Archbishop  Ireland  (himself 
a  total  abstainer),  Archbishop  Messmer,  of  Milwaukee,  and 
others  of  the  hierarchy,  emphatically  endorse  high  license  as 
against  prohibition.  Cardinal  Gibbons  says :  "We  might  profit- 
ably learn  a  lesson  from  the  old  cities  of  Europe,  which  for  two 
thousand  years  have  been  agitating  this  question.  There  is  not 
a  single  city  in  Great  Britain  or  on  the  Continent  which  attempts 
to  prohibit  by  law  the  sale  of  liquor.  They  have  learned  from  a 
long  experience  that  the  best  method  of  regulating  this  article  of 
commerce  is  to  impose  licenses,  to  maintain  good  order  for  the 
protection  of  the  citizens,  and  to  punish  the  violators  of  the  law. 
I,  therefore,  maintain  that  high  license  is  the  only  solution  of  the 
problem."  The  position  of  Bishop  Messmer  is  thus  recorded : 
"The  stand  which  I  take  against  the  imposing  of  laws  by  any 
community  which  interfere  with  personal  liberty,  is  the  stand 
taken  by  the  Catholic  Church.  The  church  holds  that  any 
attempt  to  curtail  this  liberty  is  to  be  discouraged.  Prohibition 
is  such  an  attempt,  and  on  the  whole  I  believe  it  to  be  an  unwise 
movement,  which  would  not  bring  the  results  claimed  for ,  it." 
A  majority  of  the  Committee  of  Fifty,  composed  of  leading  edu- 
cators, legislators,  physiologists,  divines  and  economists,  who  in- 
vestigated the  liquor  problem  in  the  United  States,  openly  de- 
clared themselves  in  favor  of  high  license.  Among  these  may 


106          PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

be  mentioned  Dr.  Felix  Adler,  Charles  J.  Bonaparte,  Rev.  Dr. 
Conaty,  of  the  Catholic  University,  Washington,  D.  C.,  Prof. 
Richard  T.  Ely,  of  the  University  of  Wisconsin,  Bishop  Gaylor, 
of  Tennessee,  the  late  Bishop  Potter,  Rev.  Dr.  Rains  ford,  of 
New  York,  Hon.  Seth  Low,  Pres.  Chas.  W.  Eliot,  of  Harvard 
University,  et  al. 


XLVII. 

THE  TRAFFIC'S  REFORMS— A 
CLEANING-UP  MOVEMENT 

THERE  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  vile  type  of  American 
saloon  is  an  abomination,  and  it  is  chiefly  responsible  for 
the  propagation  of  prohibition.  But  this  type  is  fast  disappear- 
ing by  reason  of  a  general  awakening  of  the  public  to  the  neces- 
sity of  its  suppression,  and  the  cleaning-up  movement  among 
the  liquor  industries  themselves. 

At  the  Forty-Eighth  Annual  Convention  of  the  United 
States  Brewers'  Association  (1908)  a  declaration  of  principles 
was  adopted,  the  pith  of  which  is  contained  in  the  following 
statement:  "The  objectionable  features  of  the  retail  liquor 
traffic  do  not  rest  upon  and  are  not  backed  either  by  the  com- 
mercial interests  or  by  any  supposed  political  power  of  the  brew- 
ers. The  elimination  of  such  objectionable  features  is  most  ear- 
nestly desired  by  our  trade,  and  we  will  lend  our  fullest  co-opera- 
tion towards  their  extinction,  and  invite  the  assistance  of  public 
officials  and  the  people  in  general  to  that  end." 

The  brewers  kept  their  word,  and,  during  the  past  year, 
succeeded  in  removing  many  objectionable  features  from  the 
retail  trade.  In  Greater  New  York  they  brought  about  a  work- 
ing arrangement  with  the  Committee  of  Fourteen  and  the  bond- 
ing companies,  resulting  in  the  cleaning  up  of  about  a  hundred 
disreputable  "joints."  In  Pennsylvania  the  licensed  trade  has 
ceased  to  have  any  connection  with  the  illicit  Sunday  traffic. 
Notorious  divekeepers  were  driven  out  of  some  fifty  cities  and 
villages  of  Ohio.  The  Texas  Brewers'  Association  did  not  limit 
their  expenditures  in  breaking  up  gambling  in  the  saloons  and 
suppressing  all  disreputable  practices.  In  Milwaukee  seventy- 
nine  saloons  were  closed  on  July  6,  1908,  including  three  dozen 
dance  halls  connected  with  saloons  in  outlying  parts  of  the  city, 
and  a  number  of  assignation  hotels.  In  addition  fifty  saloons 
were  closed  in  the  county  of  Milwaukee  outside  of  the  city. 


108          PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

Carl  J.  Hoster,  of  Columbus,  Ohio,  the  newly  elected  presi- 
dent of  the  United  States  Brewers'  Association,  at  its  Forty- 
Ninth  Annual  Convention  (June  2  and  3,  1909),  gave  the  fol- 
lowing pledges  in  accepting  the  responsibilities  of  his  office : 

"I  pledge  myself  to  the  furtherance  of  the  movement  for  the 
proper  regulation  of  the  saloon  and  for  the  separation  of  the 
saloon  from  all  connection  with  disreputable  practices.  I  stand 
for  the  licensing  of  saloons  from  the  standpoint  of  public  con- 
venience, with  all  the  limitations  that  this  implies ;  I  believe  that 
the  license  law  should  be  liberal  enough  to  meet  the  reasonable 
requirements  of  public  convenience,  and  that  a  liberal  law  strictly 
enforced  is  far  better  than  a  rigid  or  narrow  law  liberally  en- 
forced. I  believe  that  the  license  system  should  be  such  as  to 
insure  stability,  and  that  the  saloon  should  be  so  regulated  as  to 
put  a  premium  upon  its  good  conduct." 

The  National  Model  License  League  was  incorporated  in 
Louisville,  November  21,  1908,  its  purpose  being  declared  to  be  i 
"to  urge  the  passage  of  reasonable  excise  laws  in  the  United 
States,  and  the  amendment  of  those  existing,  and  to  educate  the 
liquor  trade  to  an  irreproachable  plane"  Archbishop  Messmer, 
of  Milwaukee,  expressed  his  faith  in  this  movement  as  follows : 
"The  provisions  for  the  control  of  the  traffic,  drawn  up  by  the 
liquor  men  themselves,  and  sent  out  in  circular  form  prior  to  the 
Model  License  Convention  recently  held  in  Louisville,  seem  to 
me  to  point  the  way  to  a  reform  which  will  be  much  more  gen- 
uine and  sane  than  prohibition." 

Efforts  are  being  made  to  have  model  license  laws  passed 
wherever  license  laws  are  not  yet  in  operation,  and  to  bring  excise 
laws  everywhere  up  to  the  model  standard.  The  Dean  Law  in 
Ohio  is  one  of  the  most  recent  achievements  of  the  League. 

Among  the  restrictions  on  the  sale  of  alcoholic  liquors,  which 
are  insisted  upon,  the  following  deserve  attention: 

1  —  No   selling  to  minors,   intoxicated  persons  or  habitual 
drunkards. 

2  —  No  gambling  in  any  shape  or  form  on  the  premises. 

3  —  No  display  of  obscene  pictures,  or  employment  of  wom- 
en as  bartenders,  waitresses,  singers  or  actresses.     Therefore,  no 
concert  saloons. 


THE  TRAFFIC'S  REFORMS  109 

4  —  No  sitting-rooms,  and  an  utter  divorcement  of  the  social 
evil  from  the  saloon. 

5  —  No  boxing,  wrestling,  cock-fighting  or  other  exhibition 
in  or  about  the  saloon. 

6  —  Hours  of  selling  must  be  limited  to  as  short  a  span  as 
possible. 

7  —  Sunday  closing  to  be  enjoined  wherever  possible.     If, 
however,  such  a  restriction  is  openly  disregarded,  as  in  some  of 
the  large  cities,  it  is  injurious  to  have  it  in  the  law,  for  no  law 
can  be  enforced  against  public  sentiment. 

State  branches  of  the  Model  License  League  have  been 
established  in  Kentucky,  Ohio,  Tennessee,  Illinois,  Missouri, 
Massachusetts,  Indiana,  California,  New  York,  Pennsylvania, 
Maryland,  etc. 

A  movement  is  on  foot  to  discourage  by  means  of  anti- 
treat  societies  as  much  as  possible  the  custom  of  treating,  which 
is  justly  held  responsible  for  a  great  deal  of  intoxication,  and 
to  favor  the  introduction  of  the  open  beer  hall,  as  it  obtains  in 
the  well-regulated  larger  cities  of  Europe.  Both  would  be  in  the 
nature  of  social  reforms  that  make  for  temperance. 


XLVIII. 

LIQUOR  LEGISLATION 

LEGISLATION  in  the  United  States  embraces  three  differ- 
ent methods  of  dealing  with  the  liquor  traffic:     Prohibition, 
State  or  local  option,  and  license  or  tax.     At  present  these  are 
distributed  among  the  several  States  as  follows: 


PROHIBITION 

Alabama,   Georgia,    Maine,   Kansas,   North   Dakota,   North 
Carolina,  Oklahoma,  Tennessee. 


LICENSE  OR  TAX 

Arizona,  California,  Colorado,  Connecticut,  Delaware,  Idaho, 
Illinois,  Indiana,  Iowa  (Mulct  Law),  Louisiana,  Maryland, 
Michigan,  Minnesota,  Mississippi,  Nebraska,  Nevada,  New 
Hampshire,  New  Jersey,  New  Mexico,  New  York,  Ohio,  Penn- 
sylvania, South  Carolina  (CoMity  Dispensary),  Washington, 
Wisconsin,  Wyoming. 


STATE   OR   LOCAL   OPTION 

Arkansas,  Florida,  Indiana,  Kentucky,  Massachusetts, 
Michigan,  Missouri,  Montana,  Ohio,  Oregon,  Rhode  Island, 
South  Dakota,  Texas,  Utah,  Vermont,  Virginia,  West  Virginia. 

Ohio  and  Indiana  are  under  a  county  local  option,  and  at 
the  same  time  a  State  tax  law. 


XLIX. 

A  NATIONAL  LICENSE  LAW 
-THE  CONCLUSION 

IN  SEEKING  for  the  best  solution  of  the  drink  problem,  the 
experience  of  European  countries  should  be  carefully  noted, 
for  they  have  the  failures  and  successes  of  many  centuries  behind 
them.  Their  unanimous  voice  favors  a  strict  license  law  and 
not  prohibition.  Prohibition  is  not  much  more  than  a  half 
century  old,  purely  an  American  product,  and  it  is  already  ac- 
knowledged a  failure  save  by  its  adherents,  whose  prejudices 
have  blinded  them  to  the  truth.  There  is  but  one  question  in 
the  controversy,  and  it  is:  "Which  restricts  the  evils  of  intem- 
perance more,  prohibition  or  license?"  The  answer  is  easily 
found  in  the  preceding  pages  of  this  essay.  Testimony  past  and 
present;  stubborn  facts,  gathered  by  men  without  bias  in  the 
interest  of  psychological  and  sociological  science;  official  sta- 
tistics that  defy  contradiction;  the  very  admissions  of  prohibi- 
tionists, reluctantly  made,  all  go  to  prove  that  prohibition  is  not 
an  effective  method  of  dealing  with  and  restricting  the  evils  of 
alcoholic  abuse. 

The  Subcommittee  of  the  Committee  of  Fifty,  composed  of 
Chas.  W.  Eliot,  President  Emeritus  of  Harvard  University,  Seth 
Low  and  James  C.  Carter,  who  had  this  subject  under  investiga- 
tion in  several  States,  reached  the  following  conclusion:  "Pro- 
hibitory legislation  has  failed  to  exclude  intoxicants  completely 
even  from  districts  where  public  sentiment  has  been  favorable. 
In  districts,  where  public  sentiment  has  been  adverse  or  strongly 
divided,  the  traffic  in  alcoholic  beverages  has  been  sometimes  re- 
pressed or  harassed,  but  never  exterminated,  or  rendered  unprofit- 
able. In  Maine  and  loiva  (during  the  prohibition  period)  there 
have  always  been  counties  and  municipalities  in  complete  and 
successful  rebellion  against  the  law.  Prohibition  has,  of  course, 
failed  to  subdue  the  drinking  passion,  which  will  forever  prompt 
resistance  to  all  restrictive  legislation." 


112          PROHIBITION  —  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

But  listen  to  what  this  report  has  to  say  about  the  concomi- 
tant evils  of  prohibitory  legislation :  "The  efforts  to  enforce  it 
during  forty  years  past  have  had  some  unlooked-for  effects  on  pub- 
lic respect  for  courts,  judicial  procedure,  oaths  and  law  in  general, 
and  for  officers  of  the  law,  legislators  and  public  servants.  The 
public  have  seen  law  defied,  a  whole  generation  of  habitual  law- 
breakers schooled  in  evasion  and  shamelessness,  courts  ineffective 
through  fluctuations  of  policy,  delays,  perjuries,  negligences  and 
other  miscarriages  of  justice,  officers  of  the  law  double-faced 
and  mercenary,  legislators  timid  and  insincere,  candidates  for 
office  hypocritical  and  truckling,  and  office-holders  unfaithful  to 
pledges  and  to  reasonable  public  expectation."  And  with  this 
flood  of  public  misdemeanors  and  corruption,  there  was  nothing 
to  show  that  the  evils  of  intoxicating  drink  had  been  abated,  as 
is  clear  from  the  conclusions  of  the  Committee:  "Whether 
it  has  or  has  not  reduced  the  consumption  of  intoxicants  and 
diminished  drunkenness  is  a  matter  of  opinion,  and  opinions 
differ  widely.  No  demonstration  on  either  of  these  points  has 
been  reached,  or  is  now  attainable,  after  more  than  forty  years 
of  observation  and  experience." 

Perhaps  the  day  is  not  far  distant  when  the  subject  of  the 
restriction  and  regulation  of  the  liquor  traffic,  or  its  prohibition, 
will  come  up  for  consideration  before  the  American  people  in 
the  draft  of  a  national  law.  It  will  then  be  of  the  utmost  import- 
ance to  steer  clear  of  extremists,  and  keep  only  the  common 
welfare  in  view.  A  national  license  law  would  undoubtedly  give 
uniformity  to  a  system  of  control,  and  take  the  problem  out  of 
State  politics,  where  it  has  so  long  been  a  bone  of  contention 
between  the  two  great  parties,  to  the  detriment  of  the  temperance 
cause. 

If  the  money  spent  for  the  past  thirty  years  and  more  by 
the  prohibition  and  saloon  factions  in  tossing  between  them  the 
short-lived  adjustments  of  the  liquor  problem  had  been  converted 
into  a  gospel  temperance  fund,  how  many  thousands  of  men  and 
women  might  have  been  saved  along  the  lines  of  moral  suasion 
followed  by  a  Father  Matthew,  Neal  Dow  and  Francis  Murphy ! 
How  absolutely  ridiculous  to  spend  millions  of  money  in  political 
contests  that  in  the  end  will  make  more  drunkards,  blight  more 
lives  and  ruin  more  homes !  It  is  a  fact  that  nothing  has  done 


A  NATIONAL  LICENSE  LAW  113 

so  much    for   the  propagation   of    intemperance   as   intemperate 
legislation,  and  no  legislation  is  quite  so  intemperate  as  prohibition. 

In  an  interview  published  in  the  New  York  Freeman's  Jour- 
nal a  few  months  ago,  Cardinal  Gibbons  says  that  prohibition  is 
an  excess  as  much  as  intemperance.  "Liquor,"  he  reasons  ear- 
nestly, "would  be  sold  just  as  much  under  prohibition  laws  as 
under  well-regulated  license.  The  consequence  is  that  liquor 
would  be  sold  contrary  to  law,  instead  of  in  accord  with  the  law. 
When  a  law  is  flagrantly  violated  it  brings  legislation  into  con- 
tempt. It  creates  a  spirit  of  hypocrisy  and  deception ;  it  induces 
men  to  do  insidiously  and  by  stealth  what  they  would  otherwise 
do  openly  and  above  board.  Yet  all  good  men,  all  good  citizens, 
are  in  favor  of  temperance.  But  you  can  not,  by  legislation  or 
by  civil  action,  compel  any  man  to  the  performance  of  good  and 
righteous  deeds.  High  license,  I  think,  is  the  only  solution  of 
the  liquor  problem.  The  infliction  of  fines  upon  the  violators  of 
the  law  for  the  first  offense,  and  the  withdrawal  of  the  license  or 
even  imprisonment  for  the  subsequent  infractions,  would  be 
proper  punishment." 

It  might  be  desirable  to  make  the  human  race  one  vast  total 
abstinence  society  if  it  were  possible  to  eradicate  the  almost  uni- 
versal taste  of  man  for  alcohol,  but  such  a  result  could  only  be 
accomplished  by  education,  .and  not  by  legislation.  From  the 
Christian  standpoint  it  could  not  be  done  without  the  assistance 
of  divine  grace  to  each  individual.  But  even  then  total  absti- 
nence would  necessarily  be  a  voluntary  self-imposed  restraint, 
and  not  a  duty  or  obligation,  such  as  temperance  is  essentially 
always.  It  will  not  be  questioned,  however,  that  an  efficient  self- 
control  and  such  qualities  as  make  up  strong  character  and  for 
the  attainment  of  the  highest  ideals,  are  best  acquired  without  the 
shackles  of  prohibitory  laws.  Some  physiologists,  who  are 
directly  concerned  only  with  the  hygienic  phase  of  the  problem, 
call  attention  to  the  importance  of  this  fact.  Thus  Dr.  John  J. 
Abel,  of  Johns  Hopkins  University,  concludes  his  review  of  the 
pharmacological  action  of  alcohol  by  saying:  "It  is  a  ques- 
tion well  worth  considering,  whether  the  continued  presence 
of  alcoholics  in  the  world  is  not  more  conducive,  in  the  long  run, 


114          PROHIBITION  — •  THE  ENEMY  OF  TEMPERANCE 

to  the  evolution  of  an  efficient  self-control,  than  would  be  their 
total  abolition." 

The  object  of  all  laws  in  the  end  must  be  to  accomplish  the 
greatest  amount  of  good  for  the  greatest  number,  and  no  law  can 
accomplish  this  that  does  not  take  into  account  the  social  needs 
of  man  and  the  rights  of  human  liberty. 


INDEX 

The   Liquor   Problem .- „ 5 

Temperance  in  the  Old  Law 9 

The    Two-Wine    Theory 13 

Temperance  in  the  New  Law 15 

Temperance  of  the   Early   Christians 18 

Attitude  of  the  Catholic  Church '. 23 

The  Protestant  Episcopal  Church 25 

Other  Christian  Churches 28 

Benefits   of   Gospel   Temperance .'.. 29 

The   Excellence   of  Abstinence 30 

The   Natural  Law 32 

Moderate  Drinking  and  Hygiene '. 33 

International   Physiological   Congress 37 

Gauge    of    Moderation 40 

Physiological  Experiments    42 

Profitable    Uses 44 

The    Wage-Earner    46 

Working  Efficiency    48 

An    Estimated    Number ! 51 

The  Bible  View  of  Intemperance 52 

Prohibition  as  a   Remedy 54. 

Methodist    and    Presbyterian    History 56 

Prohibition    Waves    57 

Prohibition    or    License 59 

The    Illicit    Traffic 61 

The   Interstate   Commerce   Law 63 

Iowa's    Experience    .N 65 

Prohibition    in    Maine 67 

Arrests    for   Drunkenness, 70 

Alcohol   and   Crime 73 

Alcohol   and   Insanity 76 

Alcohol    and    Mortality 79 

Prohibition    and    Prosperity 81 

Prohibition    and    Industry .' 83 

Prohibition    and    Revenue 85 


116  INDEX 

Prohibition  and   "Temperance   Drinks" 87 

Prohibition  and  the  Public   Schools .  89 

The    Army    Canteen t ,     93 

Pro    Bono    Publico .- ' ,  95 

An  Answer  to  a   Specious  Argument ; 96 

Prohibitions    Numerical    Strength 97 

Prohibition    and    Abolition 98 

Prohibition    a    Menace 99 

Local  Option,  the  Ally  of  Prohibition 100 

The  License  System 102 

Its  Moral  Support 103 

The  Traffic's  Reforms  —  A'  Cleaning-Up  Movement 107 

Liquor  Legislation   110 

A  National  License  Law  — -  The  Conclusion Ill 


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